Archive July 2008
Shameless plug
My dad and I have a 1973 Jaguar – a Daimler Sovereign – and it’s lovely. I recently stumbled across this site offering cheap classic car insurance, and thought I’d share it with you.
offWe are SO British.
“Stormy weather forms funnel cloud!”
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/7492301.stm)
I think this News article sums up Britain wonderfully. A funnel CLOUD (singular) was spotted in the sky: instantly warrants BBC News report. Quote:
Nigel Bolton, a weather forecaster with the Met Office added: “We have about 30 to 40 touchdown tornadoes a year in the UK and if this funnel cloud had touched down it could have badly damaged a tree or a shed roof.
Oh no: not a tree! What about that shed roof?! Watch out now.
Don’t have nightmares.
0Google to index Flash content
So, a recent update by Google announced that they’re to start indexing Flash content. This is good right?
Well, at first glance yes – since generally speaking, it’s better to index content than not. But there are other more worrying ramifications.
That’s a good word, that: “ramification“. RAM-ification. Sounds like a vetinary term.
The problems I foresee are thus:
- This Flash content will show up in the SERPs, but Flash sites are usually built in one giant file – making deep-linking impossible. So a user will search for a phrase, see a match, click it – and then be dumped at the entry point of the Flash site – nowhere near the information they wanted to find. Great user journey there.
- It could encourage more online design agencies to build more Flash sites. Expensive Flash sites…
- …which will have content that is still inaccessible to screenreaders and similar.
I just hope this doesn’t signal the start of a deluge of agencies recommending to their clients that Flash content is suddenly fine to use. The only way it’ll work is if Google works out a way to deep link into this content – or site developers build start building Flash sites differently to allow it.
Don’t get me wrong: when used properly, well-executed Flash content is invaluable…just don’t build an ENTIRE site in it.
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