Entire website in Flash?

[DrWilloughby]

We are currently rebuilding our web page and trying to decide how much flash to use. It seems like there's no reason not to do everything in Flash 7 (or maybe 6), but it worries me that no other game distribution site does so.

My concerns:
-It used to be the the spiders couldn't crawl the text in flash so flash hurt your SEO. I've heard this isn't true anymore.
-With HTML you can have multiple pages linking to each other which helps your SEO as well.

BUT...
-SEO is probably not that important in game distribution
-Not everyone has flash, but everyone I care about does. Plus a good sniffer can still serve up a basic trial download page to those without flash.

We are planning on just distributing our games from this site. For a while it will likely be the only place you'll be able to get Venture Arctic. Anyone have any thoughts? Are there any concerns about building the whole site in Flash that I may have missed?

[mot]

It will be harder to maintain. To edit HTML you can use notepad but to edit Flash you need to launch the IDE every time.

It will be harder to keep in a version control system (binary format, you don't see the changes between revisions in a diff viewer).

I see no reason to use Flash at all for websites. For games, sure, but for websites, navigation, text... there's no point.

The back button suddenly doesn't work, very irritating.

Also some newer browsers require you to click the embedded Flash objects to "activate" them, which is very, very irritating, especially for Flash based menus.

I don't know much about SEO vs. Flash but I doubt it's as good for search engines as normal HTML.

[jankoM]

I have one... as a user I generally hate being on a flash page and get out more quickly. Althougth flash is ages before where it was once and sites made good are more digestable it is still not a lightweight, open, predictable (at usage) and part of the web as xhtml, css and some js (which is three ages from where it was once).

not part of the webpages....for example ctr+f , right mouse click, can't see where links lead...

This is more problematic if you have more (textual) content... if your site is more about efects and images and videos then maybe not.

//edit: and all that mot said when I was typing

[Rainer Deyke]

I have the latest flash plugin installed. I used to hit the back button on my browser whenever I encountered a flash site. Now I have the latest Flashblock (http://flashblock.mozdev.org/) installed, so I don;t even see flash sites. The only flash content I allow through is specific flash movies I want to see and specific flash games I want to play.

[soniCron]

To edit HTML you can use notepad but to edit Flash you need to launch the IDE every time. The "right" way to use Flash for a website is to have the core Flash presentation system and load external data via XML.

The back button suddenly doesn't work, very irritating. This can be overcome by simply setting the browser address to different anchored names. (/index.html#whatever) You can then monitor the address and change the page accordingly.

Also some newer browsers require you to click the embedded Flash objects to "activate" them, which is very, very irritating, especially for Flash based menus. Can be overcome with a little Javascript.

I don't know much about SEO vs. Flash but I doubt it's as good for search engines as normal HTML. Well, that's just speculation. ;)


All that said, I generally don't like Flash websites. I do, however, appreciate them for game sites. It's bad when developers try to be "innovative" with the interface by obfuscating links or making it a world in which to explore. (Why VRML never caught on!) As long as you respect the established user interface phonemes, I think it could be a very successful endeavor.

All that said, why futz with such a complex system when a regular HTML+Flash presentation would suit better? What would you use the Flash for, anyway? Maybe a video; some animation? All that can be done with a nice amalgam which suits both you and the visitor. I hope you weren't considering using Flash for evil. (Page transitions. *barf*) ;)

[DrWilloughby]

Ha, no actually its a pretty standard page layout with some video elements embedded and some animated animals throughout. In many ways, it's actually much easier and faster to develop in Flash and you can make things seem a bit zippier without obfuscating interface.

Most of the major console game sites are built with some pretty advanced flash these days, though they aren't generally SELLING their game from their website, which is what gives me a little trepidation.

Thanks for the replys, this info really helps. If anyone else has input I'd be psyched to hear it.

[Sharpfish]

I may be wrong on the latest versions of flash but last I checked I couldn't use middle mouse in firefox to multitab a flash website/flash based area with links. While on a "console website" this is ok (navigate around the site linearly) on a games website that may have many games and other links, I prefer the option to middle mouse a link into a new tab...

... not sure if that's just me though but it's the feature I use most in everyday browsing and afaik flash puts the kybosh on it.

If it were for a showcase site for one specific reason or game then I think it would fine (with a HTML fallback) but for a busy, multi page, user friendly site maybe not so. Ultimately up to you! Good luck! :)

[UnknownGuy]

Just thought I would post an example of the back button working:

http://www.sqcircle.com/

I agree with soniCron, if you need to update your flash site a lot, xml is a must.

[stiill]

The search engines claim they can deal with Flash, but I've never had a Flash-based site's SEO go as smoothly as an HTML-based site's. Before you believe the claim that "our search engine indexes Flash", test it-- if you can get SEO to work well on a Flash-based site, more power to you. Until you can get that working, don't bother building up a large site based on that assumption!

[Applewood]

The optimal amount of flash and other shit on a webpage for me is hovering somewhere around the 0% mark.

If a page doesn't load instantly, I'm off elsewhere unless it's something I feel I must persevere with. Then it gets a couple of seconds. If a popup or ad appears, or some graphics from another domain, I block the site forever.

In my mind, a webpage is about quick, relevant information. I don't want to watch your animations and I sure as shit don't want to wait for them to load. Surely I'm not the only one.

[arcadetown]

Biggest reason I hate all Flash sites is navigation stinks, can't use right click -> open in new window. So google may index Flash pages, anyone seen a single Flash site get anywhere in serps?

[Sharpfish]

In my mind, a webpage is about quick, relevant information. I don't want to watch your animations and I sure as shit don't want to wait for them to load. Surely I'm not the only one.

No, you most certainly are not! :)


+1

[soniCron]

Confound your damn pictures and your gameplay videos! *shakes fist* Why, when I was your age...

[KNau]

I have to back soniCron here, and not just because I use Flash. Try thinking from the customer's perspective as opposed to your own. Of course, as developers we simply want information (preferably all-text) and no frills but that's not the way web consumers think. They want colour, they want animation and they want video and audio.

To get the best of both worlds I would recommend having your site consist of HTML pages with Flash content embedded in them. It's up to you as a designer to find the right balance between fast-loading, accessibility and visual appeal.

[jjcorreia]

To get the best of both worlds I would recommend having your site consist of HTML pages with Flash content embedded in them. It's up to you as a designer to find the right balance between fast-loading, accessibility and visual appeal.

That is usually the best balance. Flash is good for utilities and video/animation for a script based page (eg youtube.com)

In other cases a full flash based website works. I dont like them most of the time myself, but there are exceptions if they are done well. The mistake most excited devs make is 'oooh we can do this and that and make the buttons fly around in 3d etc etc'. Thats a huge mistake and is why many people hate flash based sites.

[Sillysoft]

BUT...
-SEO is probably not that important in game distribution
This is 100% wrong. SEO should be a huge factor in the distribution of your game. Your best customers are out there searching for games. If you want them to find you, you have to show up in the search results. Who do you think you'll sell more to: a random sample of people, or people searching for "africa game" or "safari game". If you can get your site up there in the search results you basically get free advertising to your most targeted (aka valuable) prospects. Stay up there in the results and you'll have that free advertising working for you every day of the year.

If you're rebuilding your website, your main focus should be SEO, SEO, SEO!!! Significantly improving your position in search results that are targeted to your game can have a huge and lasting impact on your sales numbers. I don't think that rebuilding it in flash has anything near the upside as focusing on SEO.

/end rant

[oNyx]

What I like about flash only sites is that they basically never show up in search results. :)

They only show up if your search term is something rather unique and it happens to be the domain name. And then you usually only see some title only hit w/o any text below.

Well, I hate em. They are slow, annoying to navigate, tend to annoy me with sound effects, copying text/ctrl+f doesnt work, linking specific pages doesnt work etc. Sure... they could use javascript trickery for getting the forward/backward buttons (and linking to subpages as a side effect) to work, but I've never seen such a flash page in the wild.

[sillytuna]

Flash sites bad mmmkay.

Embed some Flash content if it's needed, but nothing more than that on a direct sales site.

If your site is for marketing to e.g. publishers or hardcore gamers, then Flash can give good results.

[woo]

I finally had an excuse to try out http://www.openlaszlo.org/ when we started the layout of the MyBogle site (not yet launched). It was extremely easy to get started, deployed as stand alone flash files if you want and could embed external flash resources (for animations and such) without having all your code in flash. Instead it's all in markup which makes editing in notepad (or whatever... there's even an eclipse plug in) really smooth.

edit: oh.. did I mention free AND open source... yeah.. good stuff.

Hope that helps.
-Andrew Douglas
http://theoreticalgames.com

[immersionfx]

Has anybody checked the webby awards winners (http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=10) this year? The vast majority of the winners are flash-based sites.

Flash is here to stay... More reasons to use it:

- games are all about "flashy content",
- our potential customers are addicted to nice pictures, video, animation & sound,
- making a flash site for our game(s) will help our customers enter the "gaming experience" one step sooner than expected,
- game sites need not contain tons of textual information,
- html sites look outdated and lack innovation.

[soniCron]

Has anybody checked the webby awards winners (http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=10) this year? The vast majority of the winners are flash-based sites. I suppose if you consider 35% the "vast majority..." ;) I didn't take time to poll all of them, but a sampling of the first 20 conflicts with your assessment. I'd also like to point out that 4 of the 7 sites that exclusively used Flash as their content delivery vehicle were in categories regarding visual appeal - it's no surprise the flashier (pun intended) sites would lead. I'm not convinced by your argument.

[immersionfx]

In fact you support my argument, but I admit I should explain it better. Well, here goes:

The vast majority of webby award winner customer oriented sites are flash-based.

Aren't we in that same category?

[Donavon Keithley]

One of the interesting things about OpenLaszlo is that they're adding DHTML as a target platform. Basically the same code can compile down to Flash or DHTML. See for instance this demo: http://www.openlaszlo.org/demos#LZPIX%20in%20Legals

These days DHTML can do a lot of things that used to be possible only in Flash. It makes me wonder... is there a Flash-like IDE for DHTML? Maybe there should be.

[oNyx]

4 Seconds Loading Time Is Maximum For Websurfers
http://slashdot.org/articles/06/11/08/1352211.shtml

Embrace the cache with css driven layouts! ;)

[DrWilloughby]

I think there's a lot of ignorance about the effects of Flash on SEO. Most people are arguing from a point of ignorance. The research that I've done has said that Flash does not limit search engines from finding your site.

I saw that whitepaper (via Slashdot), and we compare quite well with our new site to other sites in our category. (puzzle pirates, galciv2.com, darwinia.co.uk). Currently, we are using css and embedded swf for elements throughout our pages. I'll announce the new site soon, I'm quite excited about it!

[oNyx]

>[...]Flash does not limit search engines from finding your site.

You only need to link the site at some occassionally crawled place (like a forum) and search engines will find you. Just referencing some image is already enough for that.

But what most people ment is that the content of the page(s) isnt indexed, because... well, usually there isnt any (in a usable form).

>Currently, we are using css and embedded swf for elements throughout our pages.

That really isnt the same as having the "entire website in flash".

[Sillysoft]

I think there's a lot of ignorance about the effects of Flash on SEO. Most people are arguing from a point of ignorance. The research that I've done has said that Flash does not limit search engines from finding your site.

With search engines, the only people with all the knowledge are the workers at google (or yahoo, etc). The rest of us are all ignorant to one degree or another. Nevertheless, I have done a lot of research and work on SEO, and I consider myself to be pretty well informed on the topic. Every month the search engines are my biggest sources of traffic, so I am doing something right in searchland.

Here are my top reasons why I think flash sucks for SEO:

Text is king! Search engines deal in text, and using targeted text is the best way to catch them.

Multiple webpages that each have a specific topic (and associated key phrases) are better then then 1 grab-bag page.

Text links show search engines which of your pages are about what. They can be used to spread your search mojo around your site how you desire.

If your only concern is to rank for the name of your company or for the name of your games, then this might not be as important for you. Thinking like that doesn't gain you any new customers though. That's where real SEO can help you out; by bringing you customers who are interested in subjects you cater to but have never heard of you before.

[DrWilloughby]

>Currently, we are using css and embedded swf for elements throughout our pages.

That really isnt the same as having the "entire website in flash".

Yes, since originally posting this, we decided not to go withe the "entire website in flash" strategy. Sillysoft is right that it helps to have a number of pages, not just one page with all your flash content. But other than that I'm not entirely convinced either way. The decision we made was to alleviate risk, though. There were just too many unknowns involved in using flash to deliver all the content of the site.