looking for hybrid sites

[breadlegs]

My client has asked me for a site with a strong flash presence that will also do well in the search engines.

Any good examples please??

.

[newboyoldboy]

www.mallorca-directory.com

[flashlorax]

the reason this site may place well is because the content of every flash movie is reprinted in html format underneath the movie... imo, it makes the site look like a bunch of spam... i would not recommend this technique... however, one could create a splash page that offers an html version of the site to complement the flash version... not only good for search engine but for people with slow cnx... if u have a solid design it should not be difficult to transfer from flash to html... though it may be tedious... as far as a pure flash site that does well in the engines... i cant help u there... spiders pee on swfs

and... it was i who ate the monkey mayonnaise

[newboyoldboy]

Yes you are correct it is well placed, 2 out of 10 in Yahoo, which with a swf site takes a lot to achieve.

We could have placed the 'SPAM' in <noscript> but we had consideration for those who had not loaded a flash player and gave them something to look at.

Designing for the converted and designing to compete on the larger market are different. I would have preferred not to have all the boring intros and gone straight into the directory, which now is the case on your second visit via cookies, but we are in the business of being well placed.
Interestingly flash intros are being picked up by the engines and displayed as images now, so are hidden links hence they don't pee as much these days.

Either way, we were trying to help with this

http://www.web-directories.com/mallorca_main.html
a total flash search engine or directory for localised use.

We would be please to hear considerate criticism on this.

[Jer1024]

What I have often done is place the html under the flash using absolute positioning.

If you use ASP server-side scripting then you can determine what browser the client is using and then place the flash document accordingly.

If you use strict tables then in just about any browser things look fine and yet you can place a whole lot of text under the document that will never be seen by the client and yet be seen by search engines as plain text.

Something like this

<table width="?" height="?"><tr><td>
Write Html here so the page looks like a document but containing important text.
If the Flash player is not loaded then this will look just like a normal html page yet contain information that SE's can see 
and use in either case.

<%
varBrowser = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT")
chkIE = Instr(varBrowser,"MSIE")
	If chkIE > 0 Then
	   Response.Write("<div style=" & chr(34) & "position: absolute; TOP: 10; LEFT: 10; Z-INDEX: 4" & chr(34) & ">")
	End If
chkNet = Instr(varBrowser,"Netscape")
	If chkIE > 0 Then
	   Response.Write("<div style=" & chr(34) & "position: absolute; TOP: 12; LEFT: 5; Z-INDEX: 4" & chr(34) & ">")
	End If
chkIE = Instr(varBrowser,"Oracle")
	If chkIE > 0 Then
	   Response.Write("<div style=" & chr(34) & "position: absolute; TOP: 15; LEFT: 10; Z-INDEX: 4" & chr(34) & ">")
	End If
chkIE = Instr(varBrowser,"Firefox")
	If chkIE > 0 Then
	   Response.Write("<div style=" & chr(34) & "position: absolute; TOP: 5; LEFT: 8; Z-INDEX: 4" & chr(34) & ">")
	End If
%>
Flash Code goes here......
</div>
</td></tr>
</table>

NOTE : The top and left values I gave are arbitrary and not real. You will need to experiment to get them to line up correctly.


The z-index places the flash above the text.

[newboyoldboy]

Yes I have seen this before it works very well.

A local site I know uses this in an html page using a background gif and then backing the text behind the gif very clever I thought.

P.s Just checked the site out and it has stopped doing it. Maybe the robots did not like it.

[Jer1024]

I've been using this technique for quite a long time.
Bots don't seem to mind. Probably as long as the content behind the document is relevant and not spammed.

I don't want to show off what I've got. Just looked at my site in Firefox (blah!) Need to pay more attention to that browser I guess. (more people seem to be using it).

[Jer1024]

I updated one of my homepages with this new code.
It works quite well on four browsers so far:
IE, Netscape, Firefox, Opera

Here is the link:
http://www.dataplustexas.com

For test purposes I designed the page to be viewed if there were no Flash available:
http://www.dataplustexas.com/index.asp?flash=no

<!-- Begin Absolute Placement of Flash Document -->
	<%
boolFlash = Request.Querystring("flash")
varBrowser = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT")

If Not boolFlash = "no" Then
  chkIE = Instr(varBrowser,"MSIE")
	If chkIE > 0 Then
	   Response.Write("<div style=" & chr(34) & "position: absolute; TOP: 10; LEFT: 10; Z-INDEX: 4" & chr(34) & ">")
	   strFwidth = "760"
	   strFheight = "630"
	End If
  chkNet = Instr(varBrowser,"Netscape")
	If chkNet > 0 Then
	   Response.Write("<div style=" & chr(34) & "position: absolute; TOP: 8; LEFT: 8; Z-INDEX: 4" & chr(34) & ">")
	   strFwidth = "760"
	   strFheight = "660"
	End If
  chkOpera = Instr(varBrowser,"Opera")
	If chkOpera > 0 Then
	   Response.Write("<div style=" & chr(34) & "position: absolute; TOP: -2; LEFT: -2; Z-INDEX: 4" & chr(34) & ">")
	   strFwidth = "760"
	   strFheight = "630"
	End If
  chkIE = Instr(varBrowser,"Firefox")
	If chkIE > 0 Then
	   Response.Write("<div style=" & chr(34) & "position: absolute; TOP: 8; LEFT: 8; Z-INDEX: 4" & chr(34) & ">")
	   strFwidth = "760"
	   strFheight = "660"
	End If
End If
%>
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" 
			codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0" 
			width="<%= strFwidth %>" height="<%= strFheight %>">
              <param name="movie" value="/swf/home.swf">
              <param name="quality" value="high">
              <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF">
              <embed src="/swf/home.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" 
			  width="<%= strFwidth %>" height="<%= strFheight %>" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage= 
              "http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"> 
            </object>
</div>
<!-- End Placement of Flash Document -->
<!-- Script Designed by Jeremy Heminger Copyright 2005 ProAlius Creative Designs -->

NOTE : The rest of the site still needs conversion and is on other browsers than IE ****e...

[sense]

http://www.frenchwinesfood.com/default.aspx is what I think is a decent hybrid site.