So I was having this debate with a friend of mine. I always thought that the web in general was going towards CSS/xHTML with AJAX where we thinks that within the next 6 to 9 months sites will start going to be all Flash (at least the good, new ones) This all started from me saying that makes his navigation bar out of pure Flash isn't a good idea because it isn't really editable and SEO-friendly. He said that is a price worth paying. Personally, I believe your site has to revolve around search engine readability. Perhaps I am wrong. I have been designing web sites for quiet sometime and I have never heard this. He seems to believe that Flash is making a huge step into web development versus I tend to stay away from using Flash at all costs except for delivering media like movies, music, and some minimal animations. Have I missed this? Curious to hear your thoughts.
Complete pages in Flash? Other than designers portfolios and other such things I don't see that happening. Not to mention that those full flash sites are generally slower, and poop all over accessibility. But it all depends on what sort of site it is I suppose, some sites should use flash and some really shouldn't. But they should really never be 100% flash.
I like Flash but web pages loads real slow. I don't think Flash is going to be the web's future. Like most surfers, I don't like to be kept waiting.
Flash is content; on a par with an image or audio or an mpeg. It has nothing to do with the structure and semantics of the page. That is html's bailiwick. Any page that is dependent on Flash, images or javascript for functionality is a badly designed page. That page's designer is an amateur at best. cheers, gary
http://www.jehochman.com/articles/seo-friendly-flash.shtml http://blog.deconcept.com/2006/03/13/modern-approach-flash-seo/ vanessa.
Flash is NOT a good way to go as a corporate website. It's fine for a portfolio (to some extent) and games / movies but it should not be used to design a website. HTML and Flash are similar as in neither was designed to be used in the way they are.
I've seen a decline in flash sites (or maybe its just the type of sites I visit) I know the future of flash is not too long since they are horrible for search engines... unless the SE are modified somehow to get the tags from flash sites..
It doesn't seem that SE's will be able to read Flash any time soon. Right now content (plain text) is king when it comes to ranking web pages. Flash is too dynamic. Thanks a lot for clearing that up I really though my friend was crazy for saying all this and honestly was a little afraid I was left behind in the past with programming pure CSS/xHTML when it comes to front end development. Seems like most of you are on par with me.
I have seen many topics on this and I'm afraid as much as I hate flash as well, its the next place for web design and development. I red a really interesting article on it will dig it up for you.
Interesting article indeed. If Flash does take over the web I have the following questions: Will SE's and SEO techniques have to change drastically then? Second, is everything speculated to be RIA's? What about the "regular" web sites like Craigslist and/or Digitalpoint? Why is so much emphasis being made on RIA's? Granted they are popular, I just think of the web as more of an information source rather then a portal for software (RIA).
Other than for animated banner ads, and audio/video players, I would not use flash on my sites. Not even for buttons, I generally hate when I have to navigate through flash sites. Nice effects and stuff but in terms of accessibility, not fantastic.