I recently had a conversation with a friend about building a website for his artwork portfolio. I explained the process to him, offered some tips, and recommended a couple of sites as examples of what I considered to be great websites in his field. Then, he mentioned wanting to have the site built entirely in Flash. Since he wanted to optimize his site for the search engines in order to “get found”, I told him it was a bad idea to use Flash. Plain and simple. I went on to explain why I didn’t believe Flash to be the best option for any website, for that matter.
Flash 101
Flash is an “object oriented language” that enables the creation of animation, videos, audio, and rich internet application (RIA’s). Originally released in 1996, Flash became the ‘cool kid on the block’ when it came to pushing the limits of web design and user interaction. Flash seemed like a great solution for every new website that wanted to stand apart. With the direction in which the web is moving today – best practices in coding methods, search engine optimization, user accessibility and experience – Flash fails at all of the above. When a Flash-based page loads, it’s not loading HTML code, but rather an application. To take this one step further, when an HTML website loads, the browser is reading the code from the HTML documents stored on the server. This code includes native tags, such as headings, paragraphs, images, etc. These tags are essential to search engines (i.e. Google, Bing, and Yahoo), as their ‘spiders’ crawl through HTML documents, analyzing tags and appropriately indexing what your website is all about. This is how relevant and appropriate results re returned when you type in a specific phrase into the search engine of your choice.
When ‘spiders’ crawl through a Flash-based website, they’re unable to read much relevant information about the site. This is because Flash applications are ‘compressed’ and do not take advantage of native HTML. While Google is working on trying to allow its spiders to crawl through Flash applications more effectively, the jury’s still out as to whether or not it will ever work as well as native HTML.
So you’ve probably figured out by now that this is very bad for your online presence. If your site can’t be found, how will customers buy your products or enlist your services?
The solution is jQuery + HTML5.
In short, jQuery (Javascript) and HTML5 are two of the best languages being used in current web design because of their search-friendly code, the ability to standardize the way websites are built, as well as their cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility for end users.
jQuery is a branch of Javascript which among other uses, has the ability to mimic many of the effects previously achieved with Flash. Effects such as fade, slide, and flip transitions, some animation functionalities, and user control, to name a few.
And then there’s HTML5, the newest iteration to HTML language. A popular feature of HTML5 is the “video” tag, which allows browsers to play video and/or audio on a website, without the need for Flash Player to be installed. This also means that HTML5 video can be viewed by any smartphone browser – whether it supports Flash or not.
By using these two languages together, websites are easily found on the search engines, engaging to site visitors, and accessible to all – regardless of the device or browser being used.
Feel free to post comments or questions below. We’re happy to help guide you with any animation or web production inquiries you have for your own site.
