simple flash for navigation

[onlinegamesplayer]

I have just finnished my first site www.free-online-games-player.co.uk a lot of people who have seen it have criticised me for my use of flash in it. Does any body have any opionions on this? I think it looks ok and will not hurt my site for seo.. also any ideas on how I could use flash to improve my navifation would be greatly appreciated.

thanks
johnny

[craig]

I will harm your SEO, spiders follow href and src links with most success, not links contained within an fla file. Why not just use CSS and a normal font, it wont look worse with a standard font, just make the navigation stand out more, perhaps box it?

[Rob]

You navigation is 100% flash...
IT WILL HARM YOUR SEO BECAUSE SEARCH ENGINES CANNOT SEE WHAT CONTEXT YOUR LINKS ARE IN.... IT CANNOT SEE INSIDE IMAGES INSIDE AN .FLA FILE!!!

Whoever said it wouldnt harm is lying or knows very little.

Trust me.... SEO is my bag

Aside from the navigation aspects your navigation offers nothing that HTML / CSS couldnt offer.

Nothing you have done is justified because your navigation can be done exactly the same in CSS.

You have succeeded in putting a completly unnessesary obstacle in the way of your visitors. Internet explorer users will even get a security warning for the embedded object.

You cannot have an embedded object inside a link.... this is a very bad coding practice and goes against every (X)HTML specification in existance.

In every respect this is a good example of how NOT to do it.

Can we use this as a future example to other members who ask us about Flash and SEO issues?

[craig]

Oi, thats what I said!
I seem to find myself constantly griping about Flash, but I do have my reasons which are all valid and have been stated previously..

[Rob]

He does have html links but (dont laugh) he has flash embedded inside the <a> tags

[onlinegamesplayer]

wow!! well best I change it quick then!!!! I really like the way it looks though, will it be possible to use the same font with html? I have read in quite a few places and been told in different places that the googlebot can read text in swf files, is this not true? I could link to a forum or two that told me that it could... but anyway I really like the idea of only using css and html and will try to learn how to use it to achieve the effects I want, any help would be really appreciated..

Thanks

[onlinegamesplayer]

well this will make u laugh even more... I don't even no what the <a> tags are!!! I have a **** memory and only know I tiny bit about how to use dreamweaver and a few other bits that I read in forums over the last couple of weeks... a lot of that I do'nt understand!!

[Rob]

Ever heard of a guy called Matt Cutts? He's a very famous google employee, and this is direct from his own blog (see my highlight in orange):-

Originally Posted by Matt Cuts

Flash-based sites
It’s not only Googlebot who doesn’t watch a 20 second video load before the home page comes into view. A lot of users don’t either. Some users don’t want to wait that long; other users don’t have Flash installed. If all of your content and menus are in Flash, search engines may have a harder time following the links. If you feel strongly about using Flash, just make an HTML version of the page available as well. The search engine bots will thank you. Your users will thank you. Feel free to block the Flash version from the crawlers with a robots.txt file, since you don’t need your pages indexed twice. If your home page is Flash, put the navigation outside of the Flash content. You could offer a choice on the home page so users can choose either the HTML version or the Flash version of the site. (You might be surprised at what users choose.)

Taken from http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-...eview-session/

[onlinegamesplayer]

changed it! is it ok to leave my title in flash? or should i do two seperate pages? www.free-online-games-player.co.uk

[craig]

You can also recreate your mouseover effects if you wish with CSS. But yeah, its better than flash

[Rob]

Your title is flash too..... would be far better to be text to be honest as then you can use an H1 tag... but at least now google can more easily find your content and see the context of each link.

[Rob]

Add this CSS, will make your links look and act MUCH better:-

HTML: Select all

table tbody tr td a, table tbody tr td a:link, table tbody tr td a:visited {
    font-size:20px;
    font-weight:900;
    font-family:Garamond, Serif;
    color:#FF0000;
}


table tbody tr td a:hover, table tbody tr td a:active, #nav a:focus {
    color:#99FF33; letter-spacing:-1px;
}

[onlinegamesplayer]

thanks... but I don't think its worked! what have I done wrong!

[Rob]

remove the letter-spacing ..... my fault, I added that but it looked crap and forgot to remove it from the hover code.

[onlinegamesplayer]

mmm. not my cup of tea.. don't think it looks so good..
thanks very much though...
I am going to spend the day working on css tutorials!

[Rob]

Was only a suggestion to demonstrate how you can change the look and behaviour using CSS..... I fully expect you to tailor it to your needs.

Good luck!

[onlinegamesplayer]

thanks... do u think this is ok? http://www.free-online-games-player.co.uk?

I think I will try and replace the tables with css now, any tips? also any ideas about using little flash animations in the nav buttons along with the text?