To Flash or Not to Flash
I have seen Adobe Flash being used more and more these days. Some of the work I am seeing is very impressive but, sadly, I often find that websites using Flash are falling short. I have even discouraged some clients from using Flash if they are not going to go all out with its implementation.
If you are planning to have your audience access your Flash website on smart phones, you have to face the fact that some smart phones don’t support Flash. For example, iPhones don’t support Flash and more and more people are accessing the web via their iPhones. If you want your website to be usable on iPhones, you should provide an alternative way for your website to be presented. On an iPhone, if your website does not provide an alternative to Flash, your audience will simply see a message asking them to download and install Flash … and that is not going to happen … at least not now.
Just as your audience will not be able to view your Flash website on their iPhone, search engines will not be able to fully view it either. If you’re planning on a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign with a Flash website, you will have to do a little more work. The reason for this is that search engines tend to rely on text when it comes to indexing and Flash websites are graphical.
In 2008 Adobe announced that it was working with Google and Yahoo! on finding a better way to index Flash websites. There has been some progress made but working with Flash and SEO still requires some extra work to get your website properly indexed.
This is not to say you should no use Flash: you just to be smarter about using it.
