This was a nice overview of RIAs, and I appreciate your covering this topic....but I think you're kind of missing the point when you mention that a drawback of Flex is that search engines have trouble spidering it. No doubt, they do (that is really a defect of search engines). But does it matter?
Flex is designed for building rich *applications*, not websites. You may use it to create a widget for a website, but by and large Flex is for interactivity, not for content delivery. And given search engines' ability (or lack thereof) to interpret JavaScript, the issue does not apply only to Flex - no RIAs are particularly searchable (even Google admits it: http://tinyurl.com/2h9gtg). Flex does, however, have some fast-improving accessibility features.
I would think that being searchable is always better than not being searchable, whether you're a widget or a Web site. But I hadn't even considered whether RIAs are accessible. Thanks for bringing that up!
Why would a Flex app need to be searchable?
This was a nice overview of RIAs, and I appreciate your covering this topic....but I think you're kind of missing the point when you mention that a drawback of Flex is that search engines have trouble spidering it. No doubt, they do (that is really a defect of search engines). But does it matter?
Flex is designed for building rich *applications*, not websites. You may use it to create a widget for a website, but by and large Flex is for interactivity, not for content delivery. And given search engines' ability (or lack thereof) to interpret JavaScript, the issue does not apply only to Flex - no RIAs are particularly searchable (even Google admits it: http://tinyurl.com/2h9gtg). Flex does, however, have some fast-improving accessibility features.
Interesting point!
I would think that being searchable is always better than not being searchable, whether you're a widget or a Web site. But I hadn't even considered whether RIAs are accessible. Thanks for bringing that up!
Terri Stone
Editor in Chief, CreativePro.com