Like it Spicy, With Flash Video

Intergrated flash video websites are increasingly becoming all the rage. As broadband jumps up a notch every 3 months, the creative types with a client looking for something a little trend setting come out to play.

Take this new website from Interactive agency Spacedog. They have turned a new spicy buffalo sandwich into an interactive wonderland, with your guide being a sexy blonde who stars in the new burger joints TV campaign. She steps you through the website in full flash video glory, rendered on a sleek white background the use of the flash video is simple, yet class leading.

The use of flash video is certianly something that should talked about in any new interactive brief, it's uses are ever expanding and can turn your ordinary website into an award winning interactive campaign.

Stop People Stealing Your Flash

It's easy forget the new generation of flash designers/developers coming through the ranks that are searching for the same answers I was just a few years ago.

So here it is, the easiest and quickest way to protect and stop people stealing your flash video, flash animation, flash applications and flash actionscript. It's called a container file. A blank, empty, useless swf that does nothing apart from calling another flash file onto the stage.

A container flash file is great for more that just protecting your flash, it also gives you a platform to load your website or video .etc and set it exactly how you want on the stage. That be centered, spanning, fixed or layered - what ever you need.

Container Flash Example:
loadMovie("mywebsite.swf", _root.dropZone);

So for a basic example of how you would use a container flash file, lets assume we are going to use it to launch our flash website and protect its flash video, animation and actionscript. On frame one you would set up a blank movie clip called/labeled dropZone, you would place this file where ever you would like the website to be loaded - presumably centered. Non spanned.

Frame one, on an actionscrpt layer, you would insert the code above. This calls the external "mywebsite.swf" file and places it in the dropZone (yor target area). Your external website swf would contain the preloader and once the load movie command is executed - your preloader will load in from the external file and your website will apear.

This basically stops people using something like "sothink swf catcher" to harvest your flash file. Now all they will get is a blank SWF. :)

BCF Fishing Classic Game

Last friday we launched BCF's first flash game called BCF Fishing Classic. It's been produced specifically to give a little something back to the 60,000+ members of Club BCF. The basics of the game are; catch as many fish as possible while avoiding the junk, seagull and standing still. The faster you catch fish and the more they weigh in at, gives you longer playing time.

Once you make a big catch, it's now time to dish out the bragging rights - by clicking the Challenge your friends button you can send out the challenge (with your score) to 4 mates at a time. This really became the viral aspect of the campaign, in which our goal is to not only give back to the loyal members, but to also attract new customers.

The vision here is to have current customers or regular users of the website challenge friends who have not yet experienced BCF, by bringing them to the website through the hook of a cool little flash game which then gives BCF the opportunity to establish thier credentials, range, experience and branding. Obviously we are searching for a % of these people to become customers, and dare I say with the success of these stores we would be looking at a high conversion rate here.

Oh, almost forgot the game stats. 15,000 unique players in the first 5 days! What's your best score? I had a best catch of 55kg - so far!

I must say, this was a great project to work on, we (especially me) got right into the fishing spirit and the entire advertising agency dropped production levels by at least 20% around testing time ;)

Flash SEO - how to optimize your flash website

As flash becomes so important to user experience and interactivity you shouldn't have to sacrifice design, animation or interactivity for search engine rankings and traffic. It's now possible to use SEO on your flash website - best of all it's quick and easy.

I just read a post on Search Engine Forums about Flash SEO. It's a question being asked more and more as flash becomes the biggest thing since sliced bread and it's been evolving for the last 5 years (at least).

Firstly, I'll have a quick rant about SEO's who always declare you must make 2 versions of a website if you're building completely in flash. One HTML - One Flash. Personally I think it's rubbish, some suggest using Javascript to implement flash (bad luck if they have JS turned off) and call in content from databases. In an age where rich media is taking over, development time is longer and more complex - corporates can't afford to build 2 sites and stay modern in design and interactivity. (Yes, HTML/CSS 2 is amazing, but we are not talking about there here!)

Flash, combined with broadband is now at such a prolific stage in it's life that it's completely mainstream, all the biggest sites use it, and use it almost exclusively. Take Nike.com for example. Don't have flash? Bad luck, download the latest player it will tell you!

So as the world adopts such a rich media application, the latest SEO questions are becoming increasingly about Flash SEO. Is Flash SEO it possible? How do I do Optimise Flash for Search Engines? Do I Provide a HTML site also? Can Google take content from my SWF? Out of My database? Can search engines see the text in my flash (swf) files?

This is a simple question that requires a long and complex answer - I won't pretend to know everything about Flash SEO, heck, I'll post that question to Matt Cutts! But what I will do is give you another opinion based on what I've seen, experienced and heard!

One of the key points I think we should start with is that, YES google among other search engines can read your SWF files. It can follow links, pull out URL's, explore your content .etc So don't stress! (although it's far from best practice if Flash SEO is key to your business)

Although it's believed that search engines can only read the embedded flash file. I believe that to be true. (we will ask matt cutts none the less) In saying that, most professionally designed Flash websites these days use things link "container" swf's. These usually pre-load and position the flash site in the browser. Additionally this is becoming a simple trick to stop most people stealing flash code/swf's. This container flash file has no content, it just calls in other flash files. Hence, search engines can't read those external flash files that are buried away.

Which now brings a Flash SEO to question the best way in which to get the search engines the content from their flash websites, use container files to position websites, while still protecting their files from people looking to steal code/animation. So the new standard is born, professional sites with lots of content should be moving all the content out of flash (also speeds the website up) into XML files or external databases.

This gives google much easier access to the content you want to serve up!
Deconcept gives a pretty good overview of how to serve up flash content to the engines, but again, that uses the concept of using 2 versions of your website. Or at least drains your time by using JavaScript complete the task.
If you notice, that latest version of flash professional automatically publishes a div with id="flashcontent" and automatically publishes all the included flash content, in text to that div. It publishes your flash content & URL's with ease.

This, combined with the increasing ability for search engines to parse your SWF files, means that a serious flash development team doesn't need to create 2 versions of a website. That "flashcontent" div gives you the ability to place what ever textural content, images and links in there you like - you can do this automatically from flash, XML or a database.

DerekA makes a good post in reply to Deconcept here. But seriously, it's the fastest, easiest and most search engine friendly way there is to do Flash SEO - that I know of anyway - have your say, post a comment :D

To Matt Cutts, if you're reading this, everyone would love your opinion ;)
So just rounding this off, YES, there is a way to SEO your Flash Website. It's simple, it's quick and above all, the modern technique cuts out the labour of a that old 2 site version trend that I'm predicting will die off in the next 2 years - completely.

The technique: If your not an advanced programmer, let flash automatically publish all the content of your site into the id="flashcontent" div, Flash 8 automatically publishes all links found embedded in the SWF.

If you're more advanced and you store all your data as XML or in a database, write a quick script that will automatically publish all the flash content into that div. Make sure your script publishes with the correct H1, H2 tags .etc - which it should do easily because your a professional flash designer or developer and Ofcourse you control all the text and content styles in your flash site from external an CSS file! (note. if your not doing that, you should be!)

Hope this helped a few of you, or at least weighed up the other side of the argument. In today's competitive market, you can't afford to waste your time or money developing and maintaining 2 websites. Besides, it's the new "rich media" age - It's where everything is going and the search engines are continuing to advance their algorithm to parse flash websites at a rate of knots.

Don't get left behind. It's OK do develop your new or existing websites in flash to keep up with modern rich media applications, design trends and interactivity to wow your customers or visitors. AND still being able to effectively SEO your flash website and be found in the major search engines!

Good Luck & Stay tuned for more info on this topic. Right here.