HTML vs. Flash (Why Not Both?)

Being a high-end interactive design firm, we are often asked whether to develop a website in Flash or HTML. Our favorite answer is, both! Although Google has made great strides to index text within Flash files (or SWFs), your website deserves more visitors than an indexed SWF will deliver.

 

To preview SWF indexing at work, give this a try. Go to Google.com and type in "Blue Compass Listened" or just click here.

 

Similar to the results of an indexed PDF file, Google opens the actual SWF for your viewing instead of the page that SWF resides on. As you can see from this little experiment, these search results can be a waste of your time. Essentially, this means you can't rely on search engines to be the driving force behind your all-Flash website, and that's a big problem unless you're someone like Nike or Coca-Cola.

 

As you can see with some of our websites, a mixture of HTML with Flash elements creates an appealing style for all audiences. HTML gives stability and search engine performance, while Flash adds dynamism and energy. So for the time being, we will stay with that answer...that is until Google tells us differently.