Adobe Makes Flash Crawlable

nickull wrote in his journal that "Today Adobe systems made an announcement that it has provided technology and information to Google and Yahoo! to help the two search engine rivals index Shockwave Flash (SWF) file formats. According to the company, this will provide more relevant search rankings of the millions pieces of Flash content. Until now, developers had to implement workarounds for exposing text content used in Flash to search-engine spiders and other bots such as using XHTML data providers. While the Flash content is exposed, it is not yet clear how it will be utilized by the search engines, as they have not revealed their algorithms. The SWF specification is openly published."

Comments

Silverlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing what a little competition will bring...

That's unfortunate

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be much happier if the search engines quit linking to flash-only websites completely. Then maybe those horrible things would go away.

I can't think of any case where I've seen a Flash-only site where Flash added anything of substance (cuteness doesn't count), and they tend to be hard and non-standard to navigate, break key bindings (like CTRL-T to open a new tab doesn't work if mouse is over Flash), etc.

Here is an example: A business association's website was redesigned in Flash. Instead of their staff page having a simple list of photos, names, job titles and phone numbers that you could search by hitting CTRL-F, the flash version just shows a photo of all of the staff members and you can only find the job titles and contact info by holding the mouse over the appropriate person's photo. So, if you want to find the contact info for the newsletter producer and you don't already know what he/she looks like, you have to move your mouse over each of 15 different photos until you find the right one. Stupid. There is just too much dumb stuff going on with Flash.

Re:That's unfortunate

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break this to you, but I could implement the same thing in Javascript really easily. Or even a Windows app, if I wanted.

Yes, you can do dumb things with other tools if you try to. But, my point is that such dumb things are common and somewhat encouraged by Flash. Plain old HTML provides a basic user interface that works reasonably well. It's not fancy, but it works. If you try hard enough with JavaScript you can muck things up, but things work reasonably well by default; things only go horribly wrong when developers try to move beyond the basics and make bad decisions in the process. Flash gives you a lot more control over the user interface, but without a basic standard starting point for page structure and navigation (as far as I know). So every Flash developer builds his/her own little custom method of navigation, and many lack sensible functionality, worrying more about cuteness instead. Basic things like hitting CTRL-F to search within a page, or being able to bookmark after navigating around get broken.

You're blaming the tool for something that is the fault of the developer who sold this crappy site.

Is it possible to create a decent website in pure Flash? Perhaps. Is it possible to put a screw into a wall with a hammer? Yes, but it's not the best approach. In practice, pure-Flash websites rarely work well, and that's because Flash isn't a good tool for that particular job. Adobe's website isn't pure Flash. That should tell you something.

Flash

[ledow]

For a start, "crawlable" does not mean it WILL be crawled. More likely, most flash will contain nothing but junk and internals that were never meant to be seen anyway. I wonder when the first "we recovered a password that was stored inside a flash file" / "we googled for vulnerable flash apps and found these" hits will come about. And, as someone's already pointed out, if you *can* extract the text from them, you can't do much useful with it besides say "it's in this Flash somewhere". You can't even do "find in page" once you've clicked on such a link. And if it's at the end of an hour-long Flash animation, you're not going to sit through it.

Then you'll have some people who have actually used bitmaps instead of text inside the Flash for various reasons, etc. The only useful thing to come out of this may well be a "View as HTML" version of Flash-only pages. But they will still be second-class pages because the designer didn't want to do it theirselves.

Given that people who use Flash aren't exactly the most popular people in the world (e.g. if you want it to appear in Google, be read by people, to be bookmarked, to be quoted/cited/linked etc.), this won't affect much - Finding content in a Flash file is like looking for a needle in a haystack. That's the problem solved by this announcement. However, finding *useful* content in that file is going to be even worse, and actually getting users TO that data will be almost impossible.

I imagine that the same thing will happen as it did with images, PDF's, etc. Those who design their Flash well will get something indexed and it'll actually get a hit or two from "View HTML Version" on Google. Those who don't (i.e. 99% of the people who make them) won't see any difference at all.

A Good Thing

[intx13]

I'll deride slow-loading, unintuitive Flash apps as much as the next guy, but this is a big step towards Flash a viable alternative to the HTML/XHTML/Javascript/CSS/PHP jumble that makes up the Web today. Other things that still need addressing (IMO) to make a true Flash web:

• Flash-to-Flash linking
• More natural and useful text objects
• Standardized framework for GUI elements
• Real accessibility

If these things could get cleared up, I wouldn't mind seeing a Flash Web... where Flash isn't a box in the center of an HTML page, but the basic protocol itself (like what Curl claims to be).

Of course given the cludginess of most Flash apps, maybe I'm just being a masochist here!

Ok, now how do we get it

[Paul Carver]

This would be great if it can be implemented directly into web browsers. For example, a Firefox plugin that allows me to specify "view text only" for Flash content.

Or is this "proprietary" information that will only be given to Google and Yahoo and not shared with the us commoners?

I don't know what brain damage causes people to think that they should present text a half a dozen words at a time in a slideshow, but it would be great if my browser would default to showing me all the text from a flash slideshow and then let me choose if I really want to see it pieced out a few words at a time.

Re:Flash content stuck in Search index

[foniksonik]

Uhh... there are now several ways for flash developers to allow deep linking in to flash... it uses a hash and directory structure with javascript to pass the url into flash, which then auto loads or skips to the content being requested.

This is not new, it's been around for 2 years now.

Here's a site I built in just such a fashion:

http://www.soursweetgone.com/flash/#/friends/punk-a-friend/

This section of the site lets you upload a photo, morph it using a displacement map filter to either spherize or pinch the photo.. don't forget to zoom in on the good part... then you can email the results with a message to anyone. (yes we collect your info, but it's a candy company... your choice).

Re:For me...

[dotancohen]

Actually, at home I do have broadband. But I like taking cheap shots at Adobe. So far they've saved me hundreds of dollars by forcing me into the Gimp because Photoshop isn't ported to Linux yet.

You hear me, Adobe! Do not port Photoshop to Linux! I need to keep my money in the bank!