[Jump]

Originally Posted by sentinels

i beg to differ. i've been in this industry a long time now and have worked extensively with SEO & flash integration. here are some examples/explanations:

How to SEO Flash, with Flash SEO Examples - Jonathan Hochman
Google SEO and Flash
Yahoo! 360° - That Girl From Marketing - Transference Metric... Campaign Innovation... Web Measurement Lacking... Flash SEO & SEO Masochist


even some of those articles are outdated and things have come a loooong way since flash first came out. and with market/version penetration growing more and more each day, it'll end up being the engines who will have to alter their algorithms to take into account all of the flash sites. adobe is also going to open-source their entire flash libraries/binaries. this only bodes well for the entire flash dev community as well as web dev in general.

My only consideration for any page is what Google has to say about it.

Webmaster Help Center - Does Google index sites that use Macromedia Flash?

Webmaster Help Center - Hidden text and links

Webmaster Help Center - Cloaking, sneaky Javascript redirects, and doorway pages

Webmaster Help Center - Webmaster Guidelines

Webmaster Help Center - Does Google index sites that use ASP (or some other non-html file type)?


In a nutshell, Google advises every webmaster to look at their web page in a text browser. If you don't see much of your content or links to internal pages then you should rethink the design. Because what you see in a text browser is what they read.

If they are going to have two pages like Scorch stated then one should be pure html and the robots.txt file should prohibit search engines from indexing the other.

[Jump]

Originally Posted by Wild_Cujo

On a slightly related note, has anyone looked into an AIR application for Jumpgate? Could be a cool thing to package with Jumpgate Evolution. An actual Jossh I can run as an application. It could even have TRICD (TRI commisioned Device) which are the base of Jossh and then also allow for CDD (community driven device) that could make Jossh exensible by the community to add things like a profit calculator or what not, it might even be possible to open up part of JGs api to allow for an easier interaction with Jumpgate itself (like jgrotpro has so painstakingly done for us right now). Anyone looking at AIR out there that knows how much is possible right now?

Is that the Apollo project Adobe was working on?


There is also Google Gears now that looks promising.

Google Gears API Developer's Guide - Home

[Jump]

I should clarify that while I don't like Flash for navigation purposes I do like it for subtle accents and such. I would love to have a flash header on this site. Stuff like that help a visitor become immersed in the theme of the site.

[Jonboy]

While we're on the topic of the game-based website, it always annoyed me when the JOSSH database (link) went out-of-date. It should never do so. If you wrote the code for the game, you should be able to have a computer parse the game-code for the necessary information and write the html-code (or fill the SQL-type database). And just rewrite the html-code whenever you change the ship/whatever data.

[sentinels]

Originally Posted by Jump

In a nutshell, Google advises every webmaster to look at their web page in a text browser. If you don't see much of your content or links to internal pages then you should rethink the design. Because what you see in a text browser is what they read.

If they are going to have two pages like Scorch stated then one should be pure html and the robots.txt file should prohibit search engines from indexing the other.

google is but one entity in the online space. albeit they're a pretty big entity, but there there are still others out there. if MSN, yahoo, etc all decide to go through adobe's sources and alter their algorithms to be able to crawl through any/all flash sites, what makes you think google wouldn't do the same? at the end of the day, it's all about what the user is going to want to view and search for, not what the search engine tells us we can view. btw, AIR = formerly known as Apollo.

@cujo
i haven't been able to jump into AIR too much, but AFAIK, it's essentially flex for your system. if ND opens up services/APIs for users to be able to tap into to collect/parse data, it's definitely possible to use AIR to build mods/add-ons. of course, you'd need to have AIR as an installed runtime on the client's machine as well. though i've never been too big a fan of CF (i find the code too PHP-like for me to want to even look closely at it), i've been working on a project (for adobe, ironically) that uses CF as our model layer. we'll be switching our service layer to use remoting and i'm eager to run some comparison tests to some of the other AMF protocols out there. i'm even more curious to see how AMF3 does compared to AMF0.

[Wild_Cujo]

Originally Posted by sentinels

i haven't been able to jump into AIR too much, but AFAIK, it's essentially flex for your system. if ND opens up services/APIs for users to be able to tap into to collect/parse data, it's definitely possible to use AIR to build mods/add-ons. of course, you'd need to have AIR as an installed runtime on the client's machine as well. though i've never been too big a fan of CF (i find the code too PHP-like for me to want to even look closely at it), i've been working on a project (for adobe, ironically) that uses CF as our model layer. we'll be switching our service layer to use remoting and i'm eager to run some comparison tests to some of the other AMF protocols out there. i'm even more curious to see how AMF3 does compared to AMF0.

First off Apollo was such a better name, AIR is just boring second off its a little (ehh maybe a lot) more than Flex on the system, it does use AS and what not some of the big feature right now are skinable (flex style), File I/O, complete access to the network for port communications and and the built in database (like Gears). The only part I am unclear on is how much interaction you can do with other applications (like JGrotpro does with typing marcos into the Jumpgate Classic). Working w/ Adobe, I wonder if you're working with a Paul?

[sentinels]

Originally Posted by Wild_Cujo

First off Apollo was such a better name, AIR is just boring second off its a little (ehh maybe a lot) more than Flex on the system, it does use AS and what not some of the big feature right now are skinable (flex style), File I/O, complete access to the network for port communications and and the built in database (like Gears). The only part I am unclear on is how much interaction you can do with other applications (like JGrotpro does with typing marcos into the Jumpgate Classic). Working w/ Adobe, I wonder if you're working with a Paul?

no, my company is working with a department within adobe (employee communications) and i haven't come across any pauls yet. at any rate, i would have to assume that macros/keystrokes/mouse movement are system/global-level events in which *any* application can tap into. there are probably ways to block these events as well depending on which application has system focus. i wouldn't really call that 'interaction' with other apps as it is purely interaction on a system/global level. so if you want direct interaction with other apps, those other apps would have to open itself up or provide a set of API's you can invoke from within your own app. i'm not too familiary with desktop application, but i would assume it would have to depend on which platform you're on (unix-based, windows-based, etc), or which VM is currently running (.NET/Java/etc).

[Jump]

Originally Posted by sentinels

google is but one entity in the online space. albeit they're a pretty big entity, but there there are still others out there. if MSN, yahoo, etc all decide to go through adobe's sources and alter their algorithms to be able to crawl through any/all flash sites, what makes you think google wouldn't do the same? at the end of the day, it's all about what the user is going to want to view and search for, not what the search engine tells us we can view. btw, AIR = formerly known as Apollo.

That's just wishful thinking. Any webmaster can look at their referral statistics and tell you Google is the only relevant search engine at this time. And no, they don't have to do anything just because you wish they would. Do I like it? No. Do I accept it? No choice. The facts are the facts as they are. If you don't get referrals from Google then your sailing without air. You don't have to like it for it to be true.

[Ambrosius]

FWIW . . . JGCentral search engine referrer stats for July:

Google (Images)       48.2 %
Google                    39.5 % 
Yahoo                      8.3 %
Other search engines  2.3 %

[Jump]

Which is the same for most sites. Google relevant, others not.

[Ambrosius]

Untill the next flavor of the day shows up . . .