Flash Deeplinking - A paradigm shift in Web Development
22 August, 2008
Overview Flash is a technology that offers enhanced browsing experience to users in the way that it offers music, animation and greater scope for typographic variations. However the downside is that it takes longer to load, is not viewable by all users because it requires a plug-in and all the content that reside in Flash is invisible to Search Engines (viz. Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.), moreover it is not possible to link to or bookmark a particular page within an entirely Flash website.
HTML is a technology that offers a simpler browsing experience to users and does not offer nearly the same browsing experience that is possible with Flash. However it does load faster, is viewable by all Internet users and can be used to drive traffic from Search Engines to the website in which it resides.
Until recently web developers and digital media marketing specialists have had to spend at length weighing out carefully the pros and cons of Flash and HTML before adopting one as the prevailing technology for the soon-to-be-developed website. With Flash Deeplinking, a whole world of new possibilities suddenly became available; affording web developers to create entire websites in Flash and yet still retain all of the advantages of developing websites in HTML. To those in digital media marketing, this sounds too good to be true; well, today, it is now not a dream but a reality and here is how this technology works.
How it Works   The Flash Deeplinked site will have effectively two mirrors, one in Flash and the other in HTML – the Flash mirror will be automatically presented to users with Flash Player 8 or above whereas the HTML mirror will be automatically presented to search engines and users without Flash Player 8.
All content within the HTML mirror will be searchable and indexable by search engines such as Google & Yahoo!, so when a user with Flash player arrives at a particular page within the HTML mirror (referred by search engine) they will automatically be presented with the corresponding page within the Flash. Conversely, users without Flash player arriving at the site through search engines will simply see the pages within the HTML mirror and not even be aware that there is a parallel mirror in Flash.
When users are viewing the Flash mirror of the website, they will enjoy the complete Flash browsing experience which can include music and/or video playing continuously and an unlimited indulgence of animation and effects. In no instance should users have to tolerate the disjointedness of HTML websites and the very limited font-set availability.
Features of Flash Deeplinked Sites
- Search Engine Optimisation for all content within every page
- Multi-lingual support
- Back, Forward and Refresh Navigation for all pages
- All pages are bookmarkable
- Unique URLs and page titles for every page
- Deeplinking - So email newsletters can link to a particular page within the site
- Continuous video and/or music when navigating the site
- Extremely fast to load – because pages are loaded only on demand
- Any Flash animation through the entire site browsing experience
- No restriction on font use
- All text can be made selectable
- Native support for Google Web Analytics
Examples of Flash Deeplinked sites Ginger Kwan (www.gingerkwan.com.hk)
Hwang Concepts (www.hwangconcepts.com)
Domani (www.domani.hk)
Google Analytics The Flash Deeplinking technology offers native out-of-the box support for Google Analytics and Google have purposefully enhanced their engine to make Flash Deeplinking native to their analysis.
User Browser Requirements For the full experience of a Flash Deeplinked website the user browser must have Flash Player 8 on any of the following browsers:-
- Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0
- Mozilla Firefox 1.5
- Safari 2.04
- Opera 9.02
Credits Asual – Open software that pushes the limits |
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