When is it ok to use Flash?
This is a question many ask themselves when venturing into their web site’s design. For some it is their first design but for some it is simply their next design.
Flash really made a big splash several years ago. Anyone who was hip and trendy had their sites built completely in Flash. The sites, once they actually loaded, looked amazing. Unfortunately they neglected to take into consideration that by moving everything to flash, the site’s content was no longer able to be indexed by search engines such as Google. You see with plain text, all of the content is found within the web site’s source code. With Flash however it is contained within a non-readable and proprietary Adobe format.
Nowadays, with the popularity of terms such as SEO and the broader understanding and knowledge of SEO, Flash is taking a hit. Some developers choose to stay completely away from using it in fact. The thing is though, if Flash is used correctly it is still a very good method of making a modern, indexable, site. The key is to look at Flash in terms of being an element on a website rather than being the website.
More and more designers are beginning to see and embrace this. Using Flash to breath new life into otherwise stale elements of a page, or even to make an element more user friendly. In fact you see Flash used a lot today as a driver behind audio and video delivery. Take Youtube.com as an example, all of their videos are Flash encoded. And it is really becoming the standard. Gone are the days when a user or site visitor needs to worry about having the appropriate video software (Apple, Real Media, Windows Media,etc) for each site they visit.
Flash is not dead, it is finding its niche. Flash will not kill your SEO, if you don’t use it to display your otherwise indexable content.
As a side note, over the years I have attended many a conference relating to SEO. There are high ranking people for several companies (Search Engines included) who are working on finding ways to make Flash content indexable.
