[thelist] SEO

[Christian Heilmann]

 but can they be applied in HTML?
> 
> I have never tried (or thought about) it before, but perhaps wrapping
> an <a> around a Flash file would do the trick?

No, as object is afair a block level element and cannot be embedded
into an inline one. just setting it visually to  block doesn't make an
A element  a block level one.

What you can do is add all the links in the object tag. According to
the reference, this will only display them when flash is disabled -
which is something users and search engine bots like. The sad truth
however is that some browsers like Opera and Safari do display both
the flash movie and the links.

In general it is not a clever idea to mix HTML and Flash. The whole
idea of flash is that it is a streaming format that allows to load
content without a reload of the whole page. This is done by some
Applications via AJAX as well these days and causes the same issues:

- users cannot bookmark a page
- users cannot use the  back button to go to the last page. 

There are workarounds keeping the history of the application in an
hidden IFRAME, but that is all rather dirty. Fact is that with Flash,
you leave the plain text web and start your journey  into streaming
rich client web development, where other rules apply.


-- 
Chris Heilmann 
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/  
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/