You Flashed My Google So Mark Scholl pulled up this nugget of a gem from an October post from Brian Ussery announcing their intent to start indexing flash. I recall reading this in October, and quite a few people were excited about this - it means the old argument that “Flash isn’t SEO friendly” would boil down to “if you’re a good Flash developer, your stuff will get indexed because you wrote it properly.” What’s interesting, is the article dives into the fact that the SWF/Flash files will carry their own rage rank - and as such, if you reuse the same SWF on more than one page, keyword thinning can occur (you’re using duplicate content). So - it’s been a few months, I was curious just what was being pulled in by google in terms of flash content, and what was being shown. I used a simple google query that it seems most people have forgotten about. Custom Google Search - FileType search: filetype:swf site:ikeif.net It’s that easy. Run this with some search terms and see if your site’s flash is being indexed like you hoped it would. Of course, I felt like playing around and seeing what’s happening in the wide world of flash… How’s my Flash being indexed? I ran a couple searches against some sites to see how they were being indexed: Query: filetype:swf site:nationwide.com - What’s interesting is their flash is being indexed (I’m assuming) properly. The descriptions make sense, until you hit number 8 that says “PLAY AGAIN. PLAY AGAIN. 0%” Query: filetype:swf loading - I did this out of curiousity - much like how it’s been stated that “click here” is the worst possible wording for a link - over three million results for swf’s that say “loading!” Semi-interesting: The number one link is a flash USA Map Test. Query: filetype:swf site:remhq.com and filetype:swf site:kanyeuniversecity.com - I figured I would have to do a couple band sites, as bands and labels were usually the number one commiters of flash atrocities. These two were high ranking when I searched for “band sites flash” (simple, yet effective). Kanye? Three links. REM? Four pages, all with some pretty good descriptions. Query: filetype:swf site:roushhonda.com - As I recently moaned about the fact that so many car sites rely too heavilly on flash (mainly because I couldn’t hit their sites on my iPhone). All those listings in flash, none of it being indexed. I settled on Rousch from a search for “used cars columbus“. We’ve come a long way, baby. So - we see some areas of needed improvement. SEO for Flash is something that I feel needs to be addressed more often (by designers and developers!) and it’s something our SEO people need to keep in mind and discuss (I’m looking at you, Mark Scholl and Jennifer Laycock!). As this is slowly moving from the “I wish flash was indexed” to “Oh shit, it’s indexed, but not how I want it!” the discussions need to ramp up and we need to start thinking about it. Find anything interesting in your own google queries? Let us know! Copyright © 2009 iKeif - tech and social media geek, mootools fan, and a ton of links. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@ikeif.net so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana

So I’m a fan of unobtrusive javascript - that means I like avoiding “onclick”, “onblur”, “onfocus” etc. etc. I don’t like doing “href=’[removed]dostuff();return false;’”. It makes me cringe - in this day and age, everyone has their favorite javascript library, and they make event delegation damned easy to the point that I have to ask - if you load a javascript library on your site, why not use it? Print this window! Generally, those “print this window” links tend to be something along the line of:

<a href="#" onclick="window.print();return false;">Print this window</a>

or even:

// ewwww javascript in an href?

<a href="[removed]window.print();return false;">Print this window</a>

Why do it this way? Why create a link that may not work? The MooTools way: MooTools is my rifle - I tend to focus on it first and foremost when it comes to thinking about UI. Let’s take a “Print this Window” link and add a CLASS.

<a href="#" class="print-window">Print this Window</a>

Why CLASS over ID? This is a valid question - some people like having things spelled out down to the letter, and they like their specificity. MY concern here is (recently) a client had a “print” link at the top and bottom of an overlay - IDs become invalid! So I prefer to keep that in mind at all times and code accordingly to the “what-if” scenario:

$$('.print-window').each(function(el){

el.addEvent('click',function(e){

new Event(e).stop(); // if you code your print link as a link, this basically does the same as "return false;"

window.print();

});

});

ZOMG! So easy! And it’ll hit EVERY class with “.print-window”! This method will hit ALL elements, so you may want to tighten it up a little bit:

$('container').getElements('.print-window').each(function(el){

el.addEvent('click',function(e){

new Event(e).stop(); // if you code your print link as a link, this basically does the same as "return false;"

window.print();

});

});

Now, why not search for “a.window-print”? Why use an “anchor” if it’s not going to be used? To be honest - you don’t have to use an anchor. The class name is what’s important - you can make it a <span> if you don’t like using <a> or simply attach it to an image. jQuery “Print this Window”

$('.print-window') .click(function(){window.print();});

Simply delicious! You may need to double check me on that - jQuery is my backup, the dillinger to my glock. What if javascript is not enabled? Gasp! The horror! No doubt this is something that may need to be accounted for - and I’m all about accounting for it all. This also brings up the question - do we care if search engines see it? Are google searches for “print window” a maker or breaker? Really, for our purposes, they’re a “nice to have” function that adds no real added value to our page, and if you don’t care if a search engine sees it, there’s more than one way to jam this tune out. For this, I like to use javascript to inject the elements in the page - javascript is needed to USE the link, so why not use it to make it available? For this, it could be as simple as using CSS to HIDE the links, and javascript to SHOW the element, or you could go a step further and generate the images via javascript to begin with! It’s kind of a pandora’s box - use with care! Copyright © 2009 iKeif - tech and social media geek, mootools fan, and a ton of links. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@ikeif.net so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana

If you haven’t heard - Ma.gnolia - the online bookmarking service experiences that horrible event everyone fears - database corruption, and total loss of data. Not just the “primary” database - they lost their backups as well! Needless to say, that sucks. At the very least, their home page now has an apology explaining that it’ll take days to get things sorted out. I wish them and their crew the best of luck. Those situations always suck, are never fun, and no doubt is causing a lot of lost sleep. I’m not a Ma.gnolia user. I don’t know why I never joined - I was always a del.icio.us user and never felt the need to change to another service - I just needed something that let me access my bookmarks wherever, and I used it even moreso when the firefox plugin came out. I tag, I comment, I move on. I used to publish a collection of my recent links, but they were out numbering my posts. Needless to say, Ma.gnolia’s issues made we wonder about the safety of my own bookmarks - I don’t back them up. Now sounds like a great time to find out! Delicious Backups The easiest, most obvious method is going to “Settings -> Export” - you can include your tags and comments, should you want, and it’ll spit out one humongous HTML file. After a little googling, I found out from eConsultant that you can use this file a few sites:

Blogmarks.net Feed Me Links Furl.NET Ma.gnolia Simpy Yahoo! My Web 2.0

It’s possible to output your bookmarks in XML using their API - but they ask that you use it sparingly. Now, the additional “very cool thing” - they have a collection of third party plug-ins you can use - we’re talking plugin importers, API calls to PHP, Java, Ruby, Python, Perl, Lisp, C# and MySQLicious - that last one I’m interested in, possibly as making it a permanent addition to my main server! Copyright © 2009 iKeif - tech and social media geek, mootools fan, and a ton of links. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@ikeif.net so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana

Toby Miller has released his Mootools Enhanced Element Script to the masses on MooForum - and it’s a sweet idea that falls inline with how web developers often describe as “how they always code.” How should Web Developers code? Everyone has the basic understanding of how they should be coding - semantic, clean code. They should be coding with the idea that screen readers should be able to easily navigate the site (you know Target tried to fight accessibility in court?) You should be starting with your content in mind - and often it’s always gone - Header, Body, Footer. But why? Generally, we always assume people want the navigation (in the header) at the top. We then include accessibility links to allow them to be skipped. Download lynx and test for yourself - and then hit up some e-commerce sites and see how many use it (I know that Nationwide.com does, outside of e-commerce). Of course, this leads to the question - why include a link that is necessary when we can manipulate the appearance for visual browsers? Content is King - so treat it as such! Why do we lead with our navigation when it’s the content that matters? Content - Navigation - Footer - why isn’t this how a page is coded? It’s something I’m struggling to wrap my head around and start pushing forward with in my own code - to be accessible, and also to show it can be done. Code should be clean and simple! And I hope to see a return to simple websites in the future… After you’ve got your clean, validated code - now you manipulate it with CSS - you take your skeleton and give it its skin and a coat of paint. Javascript enhances the experiment, and flash is the last piece (further enhancement, a plug-in experience). It’d be nice if the accessibility flash detection was reliable… But on to Mootools Enhanced Elements! This goes beyond the simplistic “is javascript available? Then add this ID/class to the body tag.” It goes beyond saying “if less than IE7, load this style sheet and javascript.” If you understand these ideas, you’ve got the basics of what Enchanced Element is about. Yes - this is taking it up a notch. Adding classes, properties, custom elements and styles! I suggest reading the article and checking out the posts about it and looking at the site built with it! Copyright © 2008 iKeif - tech and social media geek, mootools fan, and a ton of links. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@ikeif.net so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by Taragana