Flash Alternative Content ~ Best Practice ~ Safari on iOS Devices ~ iPad iPhone iPod Touch

Question

Hi Folks,
Is there a documented best practice for providing alternate content for Flash in Safari on iOS devices?
I am getting white space where my Flash animation would normally appear, and management is displeased. I need to display alternative content in this space. I'm hopeful that Adobe has published a best practice for how to accomplish this.
tyvm
Keith

Answer 1

Not sure about Adobe official stance but they have started using swfobject Flash detection to place Flash <objects> on the Web page. The problem I see with the Adobe implementation is that about the only alternate content they recommend is "Click here to download the latest version of Flash player".
That is about the lamest alternate content you could possibly imagine! Just because you recommend that your viewers download the new version.... doesn't mean they will... so they still go without REAL alternate content.
A MUCH BETTER use of swfobject is to actually provide alternate content! For your review::
If you think that Flash is somehow bad for SEO, it's time to dispell that MYTH!
If fact, in some circumstances I'll use Flash INSTEAD of just HTML because then I'll have better SEO than with just HTML alone.
http://www.worldbarefootcenter.com/
The link to World Barefoot Center in the above post is just one example. View the source code and you see a couple paragraphs of text along with regular HTML links.... but what displays is the Flash version of the image and Flash links.
The client provided the artwork for the page... and that's what they wanted to use a .jpg image. Well yes, that could be done in HTML but it would be virtually invisible to Google. So Instead I converted the image into a Flash .swf and used swfobject to display the Flash. swfobject allows you to create alternate content inside the <div> which also holds the Flash .swf, then when the page is loaded it detects if the browser has the Flash pluggin. If it does, it displays just the Flash content, if not, it displays the alternate content. Since almost everyone has the Flash pluggin, for most people the Flash version of the <div> will display.
The alternate content for that <div> can be any regular HTML text, images, media player, links, etc., anything that you would use if you were not using the Flash. Now the best part is that the alternate content can be "over the top" as far as optimizing for SEO, since it will not be seen by most viewers.
Here's another example of SEO with Flash.. again, the page is just a single image provided by the client:
http://www.ksowetsuits.com/
View the source code. The alt content is paragraph after paragraph of information about the site, including lists and links. If it was just the HTML, it might be kind of a boring Home page. But for SEO I can go "over the top" in promoting the site, since most viewers will never see that part... but it's all indexed by search engines. The end result is BETTER SEO using Flash than just HTML.
On another Web site, a Flash video is displayed, the alt content is the complete text narration of the video. Now how many people would take the time to read that if they could just watch the video instead?? again, better SEO with Flash than without. In fact in one case we had first page search result from that video narration within 4 hours of posting the page.
On still another site with a Flash video, the alt content is another video, but a .mov version, which will, in effect play Flash video on the iPhone (not possible you say??). Well since the iPhone does not have Flash pluggin, it simply displays the .mov version of the video, while everyione else sees the Flash version.
So anyway, if Flash is a part of your Web development, you should look into using swfobject and alternate content.
http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/
Best wishes,
Eye for Video
www.cidigitalmedia.com
So it is and has been for a number of years now, very easy to provide alternate content for non Flash devices... and that includes text, images, and video.
Best wishes,
Adninjastrator