First off, I apologise if I come across as completely noobish, because I am. I enjoy coding and 3D animation and modelling, but I would like to try my hand at some actual artwork for some of my developments, because as much as I love 3D work, it just lacks that creativity. What i'd like to know is whether Flash has to be used. As an example, this standard browser game http://www.playthecircus.com/games/tightropeofterror The artwork is dynamic and part of the game obviously, and it loads reasonably quick - is it flash, or is it something else? How can I found out if I visit these sites (if possible). My reason behind this question is because I would like to try and do similar types of games for the Iphone, but Iphone is not compatible with flash, therefore doing games with decent 2D graphics is going to take up lots of space - unless there is a way round it. I apologise for my newbie first post, but I am new to this. I'm happy to be here though and hope to have lots of development discussion to follow!!

The example is flash, you can tell by viewing the page source, there's stuff in there that says flash. But no it doesn't have to be done with flash, you could use bitmap sprites for your animation instead of vector ones. What you should look for is a tutorial or dev kit specifically for the phone.

The easiest test for that is to just right click it.

Flash apps: Shows a context menu with "About Adobe Flash Player" at the bottom.
HTML/&#106avascript: Shows a context menu stuff like "Back", "Inspect Element", etc, depending on browser.
Java applet: Usually a right click has the same effect as left click.
Unity app: Usually right click has no effect (but these are pretty distinctive in other ways)

As far as taking up a lot of space with graphics on the iPhone, I wouldn't worry about it. You can have bigger files on the iPhone because 1) people only download the thing once (instead of once every visit for a Flash app), and 2) many people download apps through wifi or connection to a desktop. 10mb is an average size for an iPhone app, so there's room for plenty of bitmap graphics.

Thank you for your help, it seems so obvious now :o)