The Death of Flash?

When Macromedia acquired FutureSplash's vector based animation software and released as what we know as flash in 1996 to the world a whole new form of web development was unleashed.

This software originally focused on animation to progress the vigorous frame-by-frame animation that was hand drawn. It wasn't until ActionScript a scripting language that can be easily mistaken for JavaScript was introduced that it was even thought of to develop websites.

With the fine-tuning of the scripting capabilities the software now allowed for animators to quickly script their movements rather than animate their movements one frame at a time.

Newer versions keep making animation even easier, and allowing more activity on web applications, such as flash navigation or the ever popular animated intro to a website. But with the algorithms introduced by the industries leading search engines, what will this bring to flash based websites?

Why is Flash a Problem with Search Engines?

Since flash is an image animation program, all text, images, and navigation features are converted into images. This means that a search engine will see the flash websites as nothing more than an image. Think of it this way as the search bot is searching through your website which just happens to be flash based (all aspects of the site are included in the flash including text and navigation) it will see nothing. Therefore the bot returns to the search engine that nothing of relevance can be found on your page. This is bad news, especially since search engines drive 80% of traffic to your site.

Since text based navigation seems to be of high importance for these algorithms your site will be excluded from the search engine.

So how do I Incorporate Flash?

Moderation is always best when considering when to use flash. But this really depends on your companies target market. If you are trying to get the attention of 13-18 year old kids then more animation and movement on your site may be crucial to sales.

As a developer try to stay away from flash navigation. Navigation is a great source for bots to index your site, so use it wisely. If you have to use flash navigation because you need the button to flip 360 degrees when a user rolls over it, then include a text based linking system at the bottom of your site.

Another thing to keep out of your animations would be crucial searchable text that is essential to your product, or company. Keep your text coded in html, you don't need everything in flash to have an enticing website.

Is Flash Dead?

Flash is a great way of grabbing your customer's attention, and is great for implementing videos, mp3's or explaining a diagram or business process that couldn't be illustrated with simple words. Flash wont ever go away, but developers need to use caution of what they want to include in their flash files. Who knows maybe the next generation of Flash developers will make a searchable flash file.