Adobe has finally eliminated the thorn in Flash. It is working with search industry leaders to make Flash content indexable. Flash content was not accessible to search engines, rather it was quite laborious to make it accessible, until now. Ted Patrick explains how the spiders will access the Flash content. Google too has its own FAQ about improved Flash indexing.
This is good news, definitely for those who are interested in using Flash more extensively. However, this might start a trend which starts seeing Flash as a one-size-fits-all tool. Also, people still need the plugins to access the content, and all platforms are not getting equal love from its creator.
This development takes it one step higher, but it is still away from being a native of the Web. I hope that other search engines too adopt this new way of indexing flash content.
July 4th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Myself, I think it’s bad news. I’d rather see an open standard for web animations, like SVG, or maybe opensource JavaFX.
July 6th, 2008 at 12:59 am
I agree with you, it’s a step in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go. Now there are many people who are feeding the same content to the HTML layer as well as the .swf, which helps for non-flash-enabled user agents. Now that people will start to believe that flash is accessible, they may stop this practice.
As someone who deals with web accessibility, this is actually a big step in the wrong direction. Just because google or yahoo! (not even MS search..) can index flash, doesn’t mean someone using assistive technologies can actually interact with it. With all the excitement that we can now drive someone to our Flash site, are we going to forget that we need to provide them with a positive experience once they arrive?
July 27th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
That is good news, I have always been a fan of what Flash animation had to offer visually, but the SEO limitations were pretty steep.
Looks like I can maybe revisit some Flash-y web design that I would have avoided in the future.