Archive for the 'Flash' Category

Google Can Crawl Flash?

Google announced late Monday evening that is has launched a crawler that can dig through Flash content to expose the text found inside the Flash movie.

For years, sites have been going to great efforts to expose content inside of Flash movies to web crawlers. Most often, websites would create one experience entirely in Flash and a carbon copy of that experience in HTML solely for google bot. 

Other methods of opening up Flash content involved powering your Flash movie with XML. You would use PHP or another server side language to parse the contents of the XML and append that data to a page. Or, if you’re site was mostly static you could just add the text into the HTML by hand.

Googlebots inability to crawl Flash caused much frustration to site designers and developers who needed their sites found. However, for those sites that didn’t want to be found, Flash - like Ajax -provided a benefit. 

One tactic we used at AOL in order to target pages for SEO was hiding non relevant content behind JavaScript / Ajax and Flash. This guaranteed non relevant information wouldn’t distract from the page target. For instance, on this video, the page is attempting to win on the video title ‘Makes Me Wonder’ not on Maroon 5, and not on any other terms.  AOL Music wanted to win on very specific terms while also providing a robust user experience, because of this, items like the ‘Poll’ in the right column and the ‘More on AOL’ at the bottom of the page are pulled in via Ajax in order to keep crawlers out. 

If Googlebot now has the ability to crawl Flash and perhaps (or maybe already) JavaScript, site designers may become unable to control what is indexed on their site. Or worse yet, may be forced to limit user experience in order to win in SEO. Back in September, I raised this concern in my post ‘That Monster Called SEO‘. It’s problematic that in order to win in SEO via the bots algorithm, one must degrade the overall user experience.

Matt Cutts also blogged about the expansion of indexing Flash sites, here. However, he didn’t offer any insight on how Googlebot will see content in Flash or how Google will link directly to content that may be pages / clicks deep into a complex Flash site. Hopefully, these critical details will soon become available.

Update: Lee Brimelow has posted on The Flash Blog, here, that Yahoo! will also be able to crawl and index Flash files in the future. Lee is also saying that no best practices have been created yet. Looks like it will be another long, slow road of trial and error, which *could* drastically effect the way in which Flash SWF files are authored.

Published
by
gregory
on July 1, 2008
in Flash and Google/SEO
. 0 Comments

foto eBook presents Mike Berube

I am proud to announce another launch for foto eBook. Mike Berube recently joined the growing list of photographers to utilize foto eBook. In addition to Mike’s new site, you can also check out Kenneth Dickerman and Myles Little, both of whom are powering their sites with foto eBook.

Published
by
gregory
on April 26, 2008
in Flash and Projects
. 0 Comments

A foto eBook launch

http://myleslittlephotography.com/

I just finished installing the foto eBook software for Myles Little. This is the second domain running on the foto eBook beta version. Kenneth Dickerman’s site is also powered by the beta version of the software. The back end foto eBook application uses PHP, MySQL and JavaScript to allow photographers to manage their Flash galleries online from anywhere they have an internet connection.  The front end uses Flash, Apache mod rewrite and a CGI script to allow deeplinking into the flash movie. For instance, if Kenneth wants to send users directly to his Portraits Gallery, he can. I wrote a little about that technology in this post.

There is also still an alpha version of the software, which Sarah Sudhoff uses.  Sarah’s site has a custom Flash intro, which isn’t supported in the beta version, but will be in foto eBook 1.0.

Published
by
gregory
on December 21, 2007
in AJAX, Flash, JavaScript and Projects
. 0 Comments

Deeplinking in Flash (AS2) using Apache & CGI Script

The main drawback to Flash, besides it’s SEO implications, is it’s front door nature. This front-door nature is great if you are using Flash for a traditional animation. However, if you are building an application where users may not always need (or want) to enter via the front door then you want to allow a user to jump to the content they desire.

When I first started looking into Flash deeplinking about two years ago, I was unable to find many references - or even interest - in the subject. Any materials I was able to dig up in Google then, suggested making several SWFs, or a single SWF and placing it in multiple locations in your site to fake deeplinking. All of them used complex query strings to pass variables into Flash. I not only found these solutions messy, but also sort of lame. No offense to those who have attempted any of these methods, I just wanted something a little more intriguing to build, and practical from an engineering and maintenance point of view.

Recently, Google turned up this site on deeplinking, which is certainly much further along than a few years back, but still not exactly what I wanted to create.

My solution, which is obvious for all the Java and Apache fans out there, is turning my single SWF into a smart-application with deeplinking capabilities built right in. Finally, after a few hours of playing, I was able to figure out what it would take to create a clean URL - free from query strings - that allowed deeplinking into a single SWF.

I built the Scribble Board page, which doesn’t employ Flash, but is able to turn the URL into a variable that can then be passed into any application. In the case of Scribble board, it’s passed into a JavaScript function. The Scribble board lives at http://www.developnyc.com/scribble/. Everything that is in the URL after ‘/scribble’ gets sent to the page. You could build a message, like Deeplinking is the goal With a nice, clean URL:

http://www.developnyc.com/scribble/deeplinking/is/the/goal

Continue reading ‘Deeplinking in Flash (AS2) using Apache & CGI Script’

Published
by
gregory
on September 15, 2007
in Flash and General
. 1 Comment

A Video Search API

Everybody loves videos. So, I thought I would to briefly mention the Truveo Video Search API. I have only worked with this API a few times. But so far, I like it. Truveo has built, and documented, an XML API, an AJAX API, a Flash API and for all those Ruby on Rails lovers - a Ruby API. The Ruby API isn’t tied to rails, so if you are working in pure Ruby, you can also enjoy it.

The documentation is adequate. But you do need an appkey to get started, which you can get here.  Check out this sample search for bloodworms (a little reference from my SEO article) in the XML API.

Originally, we were using Truveo to power the AOL Music Video pages, but have since switched over to an internal XML API for the music site. Look for a few samples from me using this API in the near future, and a final video search and playback site in early November.

Published
by
gregory
on September 13, 2007
in Flash, General and Projects
. 1 Comment

Tickets to OFFF NYC

I’m stoked about heading down to Tribeca this November to attend OFFF New York. It’s November 2, 3 and 4. At the moment, tickets are $60, sign up soon though - $60 is very cheap for a 3 day conference.

They haven’t posted the schedule or program yet, but with names like Amit Pitaru, Gmunk, Stardust and more promised to be in attendance it will be worth every minute. Snag your tickets here.

Published
by
gregory
on September 11, 2007
in Flash and Interactive
. 0 Comments

Big Spaceship Rocks the House!

I continue to be impressed by the work Big Spaceship creates. I first learned about Big Spaceship off Lee Brimelow’s blog when they launched the Nike AIR site and then later released the visualizer tool they used to create that site for everyone in the Flash community to enjoy.

Today I was digging through their project list again and found some great stuff, such as Hungry Suitcase and Spiderman 3 sites. It’s worth 5 minutes, but I could spend half a day playing around with their interactive sites.

Published
by
gregory
on September 11, 2007
in Flash and Interactive
. 0 Comments

Build cool Flash app & win a Mac

BD4D and the Wellcome Collection are sponsoring a competition to create cool interactive flash apps. The winner gets a MacPro desktop computer and Apple display. As if I needed another reason to play with Flex right now. :) It looks like I could even enter my first flash video game using the word soup terms War & Political. But I think I can probably come up with something a little more ‘rich’ and interactive before the deadline on Friday 5th October 2007

The details:

Produce an interactive Flash piece that is playful and engaging using at least 2 words from the Word Soup (enclosed at the end of this document).
The interactive artist should be inspired by the words in the soup or the
connections between them and create a piece of content that will encourage
others to explore life medicine and art.

Word Soup:

MICROSCOPE PRESERVATION MILLION NURSE MOLECULAR TORTURE OPERATION
POLITICAL CURIOUS NUDE BULLET ROSES ANIMAL KNOCKOUT STEROID SILVER
INTESTINE CHILD PEOPLE WAR SCIENTIST SHRUNKEN ARTIFICIAL ALCOHOL BOTTLES
APOTHECARY VIRUSES WAR TATTOO MALARIA EUGENICS APOCALYPSE BABY DRUGS
SKELETON AMPUTATION VITAMIN DREAM SMOKE HEAD DOCTOR BRAIN TOOTH
INSPIRATION ACUPUNCTURE DEAD TRUTH MUTATION PAIN NURTURE NATURE LIFE ART
RADICAL LAB OBESITY MEDICINE BLOOD POWER POLITICAL WOMAN ILLNESS PRAYER
EXPERIMENT FEVER SEX MEMORY TONGUE WONDER END PLAGUE PILL
MASTERPIECE PLACEBO BLIND HEAD PREGNANT HAIR SLEEP HISTORY EXECUTION
FUNERAL RESEARCH HELP FREE BEAUTY INVISIBLE WALKING STUDIO CROSS ATTACK
YELLOW PAPER UNICORN THINGS ANCIENT HELIX CEREMONY EMBLEMATIC
REVOLUTIONARY SERENDIPITY MAPS CONCEPTUAL

Published
by
gregory
on September 10, 2007
in Flash and Flex
. 0 Comments

The Fuse Kit

If you’re looking for some assistance creating series of complex animations via actionscript, check out the fuse kit. I created the primary animation on gregorytomlinson.com using this animation kit. It was very fast and easy to create animations using this kit.

Head over to gotoandlearn by Lee Brimelow, and you can download some very helpful video tutorials on the fuse kit.

Published
by
gregory
on September 8, 2007
in Flash
. 0 Comments