Hi! Jane I will give u a very effective solution that I have tried for developing intro animations without using flash software. It is called Websmartz. and there are ready-made animations in it .You just need to add the keywords etc to create ur own animation. These animations can be used anywhere before a website or a presentation. Websmartz also allows you to create web pages from already created templates. So go ahead and check out for urself:
http://www.websmartz.net
Bye