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...

Re:Silverlight

[The Crooked Elf]

Frankly, though, I'm hoping that, rather than little feature additions like this, they do one of the following: * Make it NOT an absolutely ridiculous memory hog. * Invest some time in making it work with Firefox better (i.e., without the crashes). * Make it work under 64-bit because, frankly, it's really, really stupid that it doesn't. They've had half a decade now; I don't care how poorly written their code-base is.

GREAT!

[the4thdimension]

...now I can search directly for those great flash games I use to pass the time at work! What'll they think of next?

For me...

[dotancohen]

...Flash always crawls. That's life on dialup.

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!

What Adobe should do

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of (or in addition to) giving search engines information on Flash, Adobe should tell Flash users when not to use it. Avoid putting large texts in a Flash application and not offering the same in HTML. This is pretty obvious to everyone with half a brain, but "web developers" often seem to "forget".

Re:What Adobe should do

[RangerRick98]

Agreed. I don't see why Flash content needs to be indexed by search engines, because no content worth indexing should be exclusively in Flash.

The only good things Flash has done are games and embedded video. Flash for entire websites is horrible and inaccessible.

Re:What Adobe should do

[Anonymous Coward]

"Flash for entire websites is horrible and inaccessible."

Not true (anymore). As of Flash 9, Adobe got some good accessibility implemented. You can have full keyboard accessibility within a Flash movie by enabling tabbing and setting tab indexes, as well as Section 508 support for screen readers. This was present in Flash 8 as well, but you had to jump through hoops just to enable it so it would work properly. Any flash files that aren't made accessible is due to programmer negligence and/or laziness. I still agree that web sites should be at most a mixture of Flash and regular HTML, but it's not as bad as you say.

Re:What Adobe should do

[Peeteriz]

You don't index the web as it should be, you index the web as it is.
"Flash for entire websites is horrible and inaccessible." - probably yes, but there are such websites in noticeable amounts, so indexing them properly is a good thing. And maybe that will make them more accessible - via a deep link to the content you want, bypassing their flash menus.

Re:What Adobe should do

[lena_10326]

Flash for entire websites is horrible and inaccessible.

My philosophy is flash should be a page element, in other words used as rich media content--not as a page rendering engine, because that's what the browser is for (as well as xhtml/css/xml/xslt/javascript).

I agree with your sentiment but I'll word it in a different way. If one is using flash to structure the document, one is doing it wrong. If one is using flash to deliver elements to implement animation effects, streaming video, logic, or server connectivity that's not feasible (or efficient) with xhtml/css/xml/xslt/javascript, then it's a valid use.

There is one exception to the flash as a full page model. If the site contains a "desktop" application (for example a game, a document editor, a help desk program, or possibly a graphical travel planner, etc), then it's OK, but that application should be placed within a secondary page, clearly separate from general site content. It should not be forced upon the user to view all the remaining documents under the website. The same rules of thumb for when to use Java applets ought to apply for Flash web applications.

When you say inaccessible, I interpret that to mean it's difficult to access the data within flash, as opposed to interface accessibility. I think that's true. You can't "Save As" the document if you pull up a report or tabular data, but you could if the site rendered that data as xhtml. In theory, the flash developer could implement a Print or view as a link feature, but that's no guarantee they will. Whereas Save As works on all xhtml pages regardless of whether the programmer paid attention to it or not. Being forced to screenshot the data, is a crappy inflexible alternative.

Oh great

[Zerth]

Now we'll get black hat SEOs keyword stuffing flash files and adding flash widgets all over the place. /me never enabled flashblock before, but he might soon.

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

[Blakey Rat]

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.

What does that have to do with Flash?

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.

You're blaming the tool for something that is the fault of the developer who sold this crappy site. (Well, and your associate who apparently contracted the developer without checking out the quality of his work before.)

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.

Here's hoping...

[Tomfrh]

Hopefully it'll crawl under a rock and die.

Something about this makes me uncomfortable...

[Dogtanian]

...matter of fact, it makes my Flash crawl!

Great!

[nine-times]

Now all they have to do is make it so, when you make a web site in Flash, you can link directly to the "page" you want. And make the Flash plugin fast. And make it not crash so often. Oh and then, finally, come up with a real reason as to why we should use Flash instead of something else.

Once they do that, it'll be a great little format.

This seriously sucks

[Micah]

The fact that search engines couldn't index Flash was a strong argument against its use for textual content. With that excuse gone, more webmasters might consider using it.

Only problem is, Flash for textual content is HORRIBLE. Totally ruins the consistent experience I want with my web browser. Flash text does not behave like HTML text in several ways.

I really hope this doesn't encourage more Flash content from point-n-drool webmasters ...

Re:This seriously sucks

[Uzuri]

If they make it "crawlable", though, wouldn't that mean that the text is available to be read somewhere? And that means it's only a matter of time before someone designs a Flash translator that pulls the content (and say, LINKS?! #$%&@ flash developers) and turns it into straight XHTML.

I'd pay for that.

Re:This seriously sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Webmasters? The desire to barf Flash all over a page comes from "online marketing managers" (which I am), executives, people near the top of the pyramid and, by and large, people who just don't get it. These individuals will preface every decision with "when I browse I do", or "people don't want to do X, they want to do Y", often without a shred of evidence and, even more infuriatingly, in direct contradiction of someone who took the time to analyze the data in the first place.

Flash has its place, but it's a very narrow place and this announcement has removed one of my biggest trump cards (re: "no you can't have your retarded dancing monkey on the homepage, it wont bring in visitors and thus we'll lose revenue")

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.

I don't get it

[oodaloop]

Why would I want search engines crawling through my thumb-drive?



OK, before you mod me troll, that was a joke.

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!

Am I the only one...

[Mistshadow2k4]

... who read the title as "Adobe Makes Flesh Crawl"? My first thought was, yeah, so what else is new?

Someone not invited to the party?

[slashmojo]

So only Google & Yahoo were "provided technology and information" - Microsoft must be feeling left out.. lucky for adobe they dont live in sweden I suppose.

I wonder why adobe didn't invite msft/live.com to the party? Sour grapes over silverlight perhaps?

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).

That's sad news

[John Hasler]

Lack of indexing may have been one of the only things holding back the total Flashification of the Web.

Re:hmmmm

[no1home]

Actually, if web programmers would adopt and adhere to some 'best practices', flash, applets, and the like would be less of a problem. What they should include on each of their web pages is a way to toggle each movie and each sound, with the default being to not play until told to do so. I shouldn't need No Script to stop the wailing of a page.

And along the lines of what Google-Yahoo-Adobe are trying to achieve here, they should make it so we can right click on any of the links and get my usual menu options: open link in new window; in new tab; in IE tab (for those who use this); copy link location; bookmark; etc. Then it would be much more integrated into the web experience and we'd all be (at least a little) more comfortable with it.