With the new slew of mobile devices out there, and the increasing availability of wireless Internet, mobile web access is growing by leaps and bounds.
As a web designer, it is great to see some standards being introduced by the good ol' W3 org.
Written for designers of Web sites and content management systems, these guidelines describe how to author Web content that works well on mobile devices:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/PR-mobile-bp-20061102/
I say Flash is a bad choice for web site.
I am often told,"but Google can index Flash now". Maybe so. A little bit. But there are more problems than you can imagine.
If you want to read more on this - go here:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=9600
SEO Mike's post says it perfectly:
The problems of indexing and ranking flash for the search engines.
1. Where to start, where is the main content? frame 10 on layer 2??? Your guess is as good as mine.
2. Whats to stop a person from importing text files, xml feeds or database driven content into frames,scenes and layers that are never called or used...
3. How do you write a program that understands heavily actionscripted files that have to be triggered to pull in content...4. Let say we get all the content from all the source files, xml, or database. How do we organize it and break it up like an html site would.and thats just a short list
This is not to mention an even bigger problem with Flash. Users have a general idea of how web pages should work and there are certain conventions of navigation, etc that web sites should follow. The temptation of most Flash designers is to create wacked-out interfaces that are definitely not conventional. Do you think this helps people navigate your site? Do you think people have the time or inclination to figure out your funky navigation?
If you have an art site - fine. If you want to make money with the Internet as a tool - forget it. Use flash in embedded elements. You can make great sites with HTML and Flash together - stick with that.
