Splash pages, whats the best look for em?

[Aria]

i too feel that splash pages are a trend of the past and would probably irritate the more web-savvy user that visits your site - its another extra click for him/her in order to get to your site and chances are they wont even take the time to look and appreciate your time and effort to produce what could well be great graphic work

Why not use these pages as goodies available to download from your site ...say as desktop wallpapers or free backgrounds ?

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[killabry]

splash pages made of lines and such will not accomplish your goal if it is to explain what the site is about. I would nix the idea.

[KnownStranger]

basically, splash pages are sale tools, it have to accomplish one of three things
1- make the visitor click the link YOU want
2- make the visitor buy something YOU sell
3- make the visitor become a member of YOUR site

so, if you want a splash page just to have a nice welcoming page, maybe you should consider having only logo + enter button

if you really want that splash well... put words, images, etc on it... so we will feel like 'hey man, I HAVE TO click enter' thats the true purpose of a splash page...

[Brainiac]

I don't have time to read through everyone's replys now.

But here are my experience/opinion about splash pages.

Splash pages that fill a function or purpose; re-directs or refers to a (substantial) number of sub-sites or acts as an entry page for a site that will launch in a separate window are accaptable. Although, you should consider using a separate window; and particulary a chromeless one...

I for one, and many users with me, don't like being bounced aroung between small windows or large chromeless, full-screen windows.

Splash pages that fills no other purpose than to tell you that you have reached a site that requires Flash are totally pointless, the same with splash pages on design portals, like http://www.pixelsurgeon.com (there are numerous sites like that which relies on splash pages).

The user-base of Flash is so wide-spread that you should acctually have to reverse the process and inform the user that: "This page uses HTML and regular bitmaps only".

So, my recommendation to EVERY designer is to ask yourself "Do I need a splash?" and "Do I really have to display my site with these means, so that I require a splash". And to finish this rant off; "Even if I have a cool splash, and people do like it, does it in anyway stand in the way of delivering the contents of my site, which after all is supposed to be the most important thing?"

[Eyenovation]

I think for sites with lengthy downloads. (i.e. a multimedia design company) A splash page provides inspiration for toughing out the load time. If the person is not inspired by the Splash, chances are the content is not much better.

For client sites, I think they are better off unused.
As for the line deal you guys got going on -
Its cool, but getting a little overdone, perhaps?

[Camme]

Nice image man, but how do you make something like that? I was looking for an orange background but I couldn't work it out right. Now I've seen your image and it looks great, could you please tell me how to do that?

Thanks in advance
Greetings
Camme

[toony]

At the moment i'm playing around with a personal site of mine and I have sort of a splash page the reason being was to have a reloader script for the images for the home page, now on the splash page I only have a line of text and one small image for the enter button (which does tend to take time to load due the preload script of the other images)
That's the only reason for me to have the page.
Feel free to check it out but this is not a site check http://www.iammichael.co.uk