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Google, Yahoo spiders can now crawl through Flash sites

arstechnica.com — Adobe has announced that it is working with Google and Yahoo to finally ensure that Flash SWF files are indexable by search engines. Google has already gotten a jump start on this feature that designers have been asking for since the late 90s, too.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 2, 2008

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  • mikephimikephi, on 07/01/2008, -1/+150FTA: "Either way, with searchable SWF files down, usability experts can now focus all of their attention on other Flash-related concerns, like blatant design perversion and excessive animation abuse."
    ...I'm glad they said it before 100's of diggers
  • inactive, on 07/02/2008, -26/+122Want to drive people away from your site? Make it a Flash-based one. In 2008, no one should be sitting there looking at "Loading..." every time they click on a link.

    FLASH SITES SUCK. We were better off when they DIDN'T show up in search results. Including them simply constitutes pollution.
  • umbrellainabin, on 07/02/2008, -29/+84BAN FLASH SITES NO ONE LIKES THEM ESPECIALLY ON THOSE WHERE YOU HAVE TO CLICK ON THE STUPID ***** "SKIP INTRO" BUTTON TO STOP WATCHING SOME ***** 30 SECOND VIDEO ABOUT THE WEBSITE YOU WANT TO SEE
  • inactive, on 07/02/2008, -19/+70Flash sucks.
    Searchable indexable Flash still sucks
  • cbartlett, on 07/02/2008, -3/+50Dugg for appropriate use of caps.
  • watklax, on 07/02/2008, -3/+31Spiders creep me out.
  • spyd3rweb, on 07/02/2008, -9/+36Please stop using flash to make entire sites, they're slow, ugly and look outdated really fast.
  • sfacets, on 07/02/2008, -14/+41Terrible idea. This will herald the return of flash-based websites, do we really want that? Lean, clean html+css with optional JavaScript is all you need to create a great functional website. Why weigh it down with bloated and unnecessary Flash animation?
  • sghimire, on 07/01/2008, -8/+31This is great news for developers and web marketers. However, I will still caution you to not go overboard with the use of Flash on your website. Pay attention to where you visitors are coming from and the type of connections they have.
  • Natnie, on 07/02/2008, -6/+27***** the iPhone.
  • noin, on 07/02/2008, -0/+19Flash? Future? ....
  • inactive, on 07/02/2008, -6/+23FTA: ...developing an algorithm that "explores Flash files in the same way that a person would,"...

    What, you mean closing the tab and never going to the site again, ever?
  • inactive, on 07/02/2008, -12/+30"Overboard"?

    Let's make it simple: FLASH SITES SUCK ROYAL ASS.

    Any time you go to a company's Internet portal and see "LOADING"... you know to bail. IMMEDIATELY.

    It is amateur hour at its worst. And certain kinds of companies are universal offenders. Fashion-related companies tend to be the worst.
  • Zounas, on 07/02/2008, -2/+18Then Google can put "View as HTML" next to the results... in my fantasies
  • silver26, on 07/02/2008, -3/+19Complaining about Flash sites is the hip thing to do.
  • cadmiumpaint, on 07/02/2008, -11/+26Very cool. I know all you web developers hate it, but thats life. Adapt with the technology or get a new job. Clients and designers like things that look like money was spent on it. We like things that no one else has. We HATE being limited by technology.

    If you want to get rid of something, get rid of boring 3 column layouts. The problem with the internet is that for the most part it looks like complete crap. Flash is another tool that can be used effectively if restrained. Just making something functional and data centered in HTML and CSS isn't enough for most people. There are alot of designers out there who see the internet as an interface that needs good design..not just another boring 3 column layout with "web 2.0 buttons", on it.

    However when you become that guy who has the site that takes internet days to load, then you've overdone it. I hate those sites too.
  • SSUK, on 07/02/2008, -3/+16While I agree that some websites use Flash unnecessarily, not ALL Flash websites are bad. Application-based websites allow for wonderfully interactive websites which are designed to 'wow' users, not bore them to ***** with some weak AJAX and text-html/CSS. If you cannot see the point of application websites, that's your loss but content-rich websites delivered in an interactive format are a very viable website choice for designers so long they make the site accessible and usable on lower-powered PCs/mobile devices (that support Flash).
  • MavRevMatt, on 07/02/2008, -6/+20I've never liked Flash for this along with other reasons. Glad to see one's fixed since some of the others will never be. i.e. It being proprietary owned by Adobe.
  • lcmatt, on 07/02/2008, -4/+17Flash can have it's uses (custom fonts on web pages etc) or games however creating a full website in Flash is plain overkill (see 2advanced.com for an example)
  • snow1, on 07/02/2008, -0/+14I agree that it's a shame that Flash has been misused for so many years to make bloated, overcomplicated sites. However, I have to say that as a designer, Flash does offer far more creative freedom over layouts than any other solution I've seen.

    CSS is all very well, but I would gladly do away with the cross-browser issues, the limitations of 3 column layouts, and the cookie-cutter websites that we've been seeing for years.

    This news makes me happy.
  • inactive, on 07/02/2008, -0/+11I don't think people are getting your sarcasm.

    Right?
  • digitalpencil, on 07/02/2008, -4/+14i've never understood all the hating on Flash. It's the most pervasive plugin on the planet and as such, has brought robust streaming video to practically every browser config, bypassing player/codec incompatibility.
    Granted it's often used in situations where it's not warranted and there are many examples of bad design executed through it but couldn't the same be said of every platform? It is limited by varying factors but thanks to AS3, it's really pushing the boundaries and has evolved from a simple vector animation suite, into a powerful system capable of delivering rich, cross-browser compatible, data-driven media.
    People often seem to complain about it being closed-source but there is a huge OS-Flash community and it's the dev's decision if he/she doesn't want you butchering their code. After all, having a skillset that sets you apart from other designers all creating the same template-based crap as everyone else is kind of important in finding employment.
  • jaythree9, on 07/02/2008, -1/+11Flash is just a tool, and you can't blame the tool for the stupid crap people do with it. It's actually an incredibly versatile tool at that, and when used properly can provide some pretty amazing immersive experiences. For anyone who likes to experiment with data/content visualizations, it's essential. Processing and Director are awesome but for the web, Flash is the *****. Check out anything done on Digg Labs and tell me it's not cool. You may digress into "yeah but why?"...well why is anything made? Experimentation is the aorta of life.
  • brosef, on 07/02/2008, -1/+10I think people are missing the point. Flash != crappy annoying intro animation. Flash DOES equal a client side, web distributable application engine. Flash is used by most video websites to serve video seamlessly across platforms. So crawling of Flash means better indexing of online videos.

    On top of that FLEX is a very powerful and robust framework for developing real rich internet applications. That means flash player is not just playing flashy animations, it means its playing applications like the ones people are trying to create with AJAX, but without the need to use reams of hackish javascript libraries. HTTP was never designed to run applications, it was designed to host pages.

    With this move from Adobe and the search engines, you'll actually have fewer of the annoying flash intros that you don't want, and more of the real online applications that you do want.

    Assuming Flash only plays annoying animations makes you sound like luddites, and if you've never heard about FLEX, (or Microsoft Silverlight for that matter), stop pretending you know what your talking about, and go educate yourself before posting.
  • inactive, on 07/02/2008, -3/+12Stupid use of Flash is not Flash's fault. That's like saying LET'S BAN PAINT BECAUSE I THINK A LOT OF PAINTINGS ARE UGLY.
  • troyfoley, on 07/02/2008, -0/+9Flash doesn't kill web sites. People who use Flash kill web sites.
  • roxya, on 07/02/2008, -0/+8Yep.
  • Groady, on 07/02/2008, -5/+14Christ stop bitching about Flash sites. Yes there are plenty of badly designed Flash sites but this is no different than the multitude of badly designed HTML/CSS sites. Flash is a web technology to be used alongside HTML, yes some sites use it excessively but then there are plenty of sites that use it well. And some sites would be ***** without it... hello youtube. Ultimately, if you really hate Flash so much uninstall the ***** Flash Player from you browser and then see how far you get. Flash has been around for some years now and is not going anywhere so deal with it.
  • jamesdew, on 07/02/2008, -2/+10fasion web sites are not marketed at you
  • estacado, on 07/02/2008, -0/+7They are working on it. The title implies that it is already running.
  • ganus, on 07/02/2008, -3/+9This doesn't change the fact that I hate almost every flash website I've been to.
  • doctordiggler, on 07/02/2008, -0/+61995 called, they want there arguments for why flash suxors back.
  • maninalift, on 07/02/2008, -1/+7Any progress also on making flash sights behave nicely when I want to open a link in a new tab or bookmark a particular part of the site (that has the same address as the rest of the site but is in a different state).
  • pnunn, on 07/02/2008, -0/+6Seems like the people talking ***** about flash here just don't know how to use it. These arguments are a bit long in the tooth and uninformed.

    I do flash, I do CSS- and by being well versed in each I am not making decisions based on limitations- and if I do run into a limitation I hand off to our programmer. WTF? Why does everything on digg always turn into a war between apps, browsers, methods and OS's? This is good news- if you are afraid flash users will get ahead of you because of it- then go learn flash.
  • digitalpencil, on 07/02/2008, -0/+5sights?
  • TBBucs, on 07/02/2008, -5/+9I was seriously hoping that Flash would just...I don't know...disappear. This development doesn't help make my dream come true.
  • jamesdew, on 07/02/2008, -0/+5indeed
  • MrTsLoveChild, on 07/02/2008, -0/+5except you can. you 'tards complaining about Flash sites being outdated and ***** might want to update your Mosaic browsers, get a screen with more than 32 colors and check out the thousands of Flash sites that have deep-linking and are standards-compliant.

    who the ***** even has Flash intros anymore? do y'all exclusively surf the web on archive.org?
  • paaaaaaaaaa, on 07/02/2008, -7/+12People seem to think that the only way to sell your product/service is to write a million lines of text about it. Sometimes it is better for a website to have more of a brochure style website with large images and or video. Flash would be the best choice for this.

    However the main reason some of these "fashion" sites like to use flash is for individualism. Html sites all look very samey. Fashion sites are trying to say we are one of a kind and there no easier way to do that than flash.
  • roxya, on 07/02/2008, -0/+5robots.txt ?
  • geoken, on 07/02/2008, -0/+4Yup, it's called SWFAddress.

    Basically what it does is allow the developer to trigger functions based on a hash appended to the URL. So when you navigate to mysite.com/#home I'll receive 'home' as a variable as well as having an event fired that will allow me to act on the variable 'home'. Basically this lets me trigger state change code based on the current address. So if you bookmark mysite.com/#gallery, when you click the bookmark you'll navigate to mysite.com, then the 'gallery' variable will be acted upon and my page will display the gallery. If you navigate away from 'gallery' the browser URL will change to whatever page/state you navigated to. This produces the side effect of allowing your browser's back and forward buttons to work within the flash page as you would expect them to work on an HTML page.

  • burton3660, on 07/02/2008, -0/+4Im starting to deny that there is a thing that you sent me.
  • Me1000, on 07/02/2008, -1/+5he isnt talking about Flash as in the plugin, he is saying whole websites that are made using flash! Where the whole thing is one big flash file!

    Flash has a purpose, but it is overdone by most everyone!
    "Hey look everyone, the water droplets follow my cursor! Im going to add this to all my websites!"
  • knuvue, on 07/02/2008, -0/+4I wasn't even going to comment, but I think you're spot on. Flash is just a "cool" thing to complain about on digg. As a flash and css designer/dev I know that skillfully designed flash elements used in moderation can be highly effective for both usability and aesthetics on the web.
  • analograbbit, on 07/02/2008, -0/+3Even some Flash animation on sites (not saying the entire site is Flash) are used for tutorials, and interactive learning modules.
    This would be useful to be searchable, and not be unnecessary as far as awful interface for site design.
  • nortago, on 07/02/2008, -0/+3Ha! agreed...
  • popfly, on 07/02/2008, -0/+3You can link to it. There are several ways to pass parameters to SWF file with a stateful design. Are you really bitching about flash because someone put an intro animation on their website? That is insane. Do you hate HTML because you ran into a "Skip this Ad" segway? Come on. How many of you haters have actually used flash past the point of moving a circle from one end of the screen to another? None of you? Damn. Read up on AS3, AMFPHP, and any of the physics engines and tell me that Flash and Actionscript have no use for seriously useful web applications.
  • kiubo, on 07/02/2008, -0/+3It seems most of the people commenting here about flash dont much of what they are talking about. I agree that flash used poorly can yield some horrible results. And it has. But it has evolved a lot on the past 5 years. It seems the concept that most people have of flash isnt up to date. Like i said before in some other post... flash is good for some things. HTML is good for some things... There are some things that flash does that just can't be replaced as easily by CSS (e.g. data visualization). The content should determine the technology, not the other way around.
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