Paul -

I'm a usability obsessive too, and agree with you in principle. However, I want to cut out a large exception - a favorite application of mine is SoundSlides, which is used, as the name suggests, to combine audio and still pictures.

It's aimed at journalists, enabling them to put together stories without having to muck about in Flash.

A well-done SoundSlides treats you like a passenger - someone else is controlling the pace for the purpose of telling a story in a particular way, with a particular rhythm.

Slideshows done for that purpose are closer, it seems to me, to movies. You have to let the author run it, elsewise you don't get his/her take - you just get the component parts.

Scott Atkinson
Watertown NY