I have always been a proponent of standards-based web design. Semantic markup is tasty for me and for the search engines. It makes everyone happy. However, clients do like Flash based websites for the ability to control things explicitly. The rub has always been that a great website is Flash is basically invisible to the search engines. I have always argued that non-Flash sites are best. All your content is indexed and searchable, and Flash-based sites are out of luck. Well apparently no more.
I read in Ars Technica today that Flash based sites are good-to-go. Apparently the major search engines can now rip through Flash sites and index the content. Does this mean that more sites will be Flash-based?
Perhaps.
However there is one caveat from the article:
Of course, Google (and eventually Yahoo) won’t be able to index everything embedded within a Flash file—at least not yet. Anything that is image-related, including text that is embedded into images, will be invisible to the search engines for the time being. Google also noted that it can’t execute certain JavaScripts that may be embedded into a Flash file, and that while it indexes content that is contained in a separate HTML or XML file, it won’t be counted as part of the content in the Flash file. These are all issues that are being worked on, however, and are likely to change in the future.
Just how will it index text rendered in an image? Isn’t that what CAPTCHA systems are now? Images of text that you have to type in so that humans can be separated from the bots? Would love to see how that will be done. I don’t see that coming any time soon. But I can be proven wrong too. 
Do you think that Flash sites are better than traditional non-flash websites?
Do you need help with Wordpress, or the Thesis theme?
If you are a web designer or web developer needing help, or a 'do-it-yourselfer' looking for a professional Internet presence I can help.
If you need help with a specific WordPress or Thesis theme issue or a complete website, I offer consultation, complete web design, and web development services.
Get in touch and we can talk about your needs and start the process.
12
