Should SWF need to be searchable?
15 Feb 2008We hear people asking questions, how to make swf (more) searchable? Is SWF searchable?
Not many people know, most of the search engines index text within swf files. My question is:
Should SWF need to be searchable?
I have got different opinion on this entire idea:
- SWF is *not content* rather an application.
- To make it searchable, it require special effort, which doesn't make sense.
- hardcoded text in swf
- extra deep-linking workarounds, apart from basic support, to instantiate view-state
Some questions:
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Should search-engines index applications?
-
Does desktop-search index desktop-applications (executables)?
Why do we need to prove swf is a good option? I think, it is. The whole idea of searchability applies to content, and I already said swf should not be seen as content (like html, xml, text, etc).
I can imagine a few ways to add search support without doing special workarounds, these are known things:
- As we know, it's good practice to have support for deep-linking or REST URIs
- Having that in place, metadata can be injected in html-wrapper or a supporting xml file with all possible deep-links to view-states within Flash/Flex apps (swf)?
Structure (view metadata - heading, some info, etc) of application can be semantically encoded in html with appropriate deep-links to views in an application.
What you think about it?
Technorati tags: swf, search, deep linking, index