Comments on: Flash… aaaaahhhhh… Saviour of the Universe!

By: Laura Design

Laura Design — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:21:26 +0000

Great article! – it is extremely important you take into consideration how flash will affect your website and how Google will ‘spider’ it. Looking at the website as mentioned – The Rocky Factory’ this does indeed present many problems. For one, the navigation is hidden and can only be accessed by simply guessing where the buttons are placed. Based on the evidence above, it clearly shows that all flash that is embedded must be text based to allow for search engine compatibility.

By: Chris Morin

Chris Morin — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:29:00 +0000

That Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory are the type that drive me crazy… you have to guess where to put your mouse to find the secret door into the secret passageway that leads to actual information about the site… I just run away screaming!! Except in this case, there is one of these stores at the mall so that’s a better choice anyway.

By: Judith 'deCabbit' Lewis

Judith 'deCabbit' Lewis — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:24:01 +0000

@Simon *giggles* I have to read you more – I hadn’t realised you’d done that but it seems great minds think alike!

@Maurice I have to agree tho – I’m going to be looking to Ms Dewey to really whip those sites into proper submission *LAUGS* damn that’s far too geeky

@Tom I don’t think it’s an execution thing to figure out what’s happening (and it can’t read Javascript), it’s more of an understanding of what the code means and understanding where equivalent HML elements would be and understanding them then ranking the site. So my issue isn’t that it’s hard to understand the execution to understand what is going to happen but that you can compile crap code and it’ll still look beautiful – but it then still presents a search engine with confusing code even though they can now understand it.
So best practice remains to create an HTML equivalent because of crap code more than lack of SE understanding.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:39:42 +0000

I’m a videogame programmer and I can tell you it’s not really possible to look at a piece of javascript or a flash program and know what it’s going to do, unless you run it. You can write infinitely complicated programs that can produce any kind of behavior. I don’t think the spider bots can sit around at all sites to wait and see what happens in each program. It’d also be hard to label or index what a flash program is producing, too.

By: Maurice

Maurice — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:05:47 +0000

>> Ms. Dewey will simply take her crop and beat the offending sites in to HTML submission

be still my beating heart do ou wonder if ypou type max mosley into MS dewey you get and easter egg.

By: Simon Heseltine

Simon Heseltine — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:48:06 +0000

Title wise – GMTA

http://endlessplain.com/2008/07/01/flash-ahh-ahh-it-can-be-indexed-now/

By: Judith 'deCabbit' Lewis

Judith 'deCabbit' Lewis — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:43:14 +0000

@Melanie I can understand your points. I think that for those worried about such things, [FLASH] marked sites will provide them with a signpost about what sites to avoid. To others, it will offer them a chance to find something yet undiscovered.

The point really was that best practice still applies and so using the good old fashioned “cloaking” (which it really isn’t) is still essential.

By: Melanie Prough

Melanie Prough — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:20:25 +0000

So here’s a concern…. Search results labeled {FLASH} amid a sea of distrust from searchers concerned about malware and other snakeoil… Or even just concerned about having to download a Flash Player. Additionally, just forget about any AOL visitors as they have to jump through hoops and search out a proper Flash installation to even thinks about clicking into that page. This is worse than NOT spidering them.