Hello people,

I've seen a lot of great flash designers, but to me, the most creative and professional have to be the folks over at PixelBrick.com. I'm a long-time web designer new at flash, and my ultimate goal is to intergrade my 2D concepts with impressive, yet subtle animation, similar to some of their designs. For those that have no idea what I'm talking about, take a look at some of the sites they've done

For those that are familiar, can you answer a few questions for me.
[list=A][*] Can all of that animation be done in Flash 5 and/or MX? If not, what programs do you think they used? I'm specifically interested in the light beems, comets, objects lighting up, and sliding text. If you look at HostRocket and Santec especially... they're good at taking static images and periodically lighting up certain parts of it.[*] They seem to be using a javascript flash detector, to show flash and html versions of the site... Flashkit has java and non-java detector tutorials. From your experience, which do you find is better, more accessible, etc.?[*] Do you guys know any other business sites that implement flash as well as they do?[/list=A]

Thanks in advance for any helpful responses.