embedding flash

[retseloj]

how do you embed a flash file on your intro?
how do you embed a flash file as a banner?
is it true that if you have a flash intro, search engines can't crawl it? i heard flash makes the meta tags useless?
how do you upload a flash file?

thanks! newbie in flash here...

[Pig]

1 & 2: You can do a search on google for an embed tag, or you can find them on the macromedia site, but the easiest route is to either have your html editor insert one (almost all of them can) or have your flash program output the html for you (usually under publish, or export).

3: SWF files do not display an textual code for a spider to use. If you include links to the rest of your site, then the spider can still keep crawling. ie: swf's do not kill spiders, but not compensating does. Flash can kill your rankings, because there is no information for the spider to read. If you page is all about weiner dogs, but there is no written reference on the page about weiner dogs, don't expect to get very good listings in search engines, even if you have an entire encyclopedia about weiner dogs in swf format.

4: Meta tags for engine placement (such as keywords) are already usless as they are ignored by every major search engine. robot meta data is still useful, but not for ranking/placement. Flash does not effect your meta tags at all.

5: Like any other file. Once you publish it into swf format, you upload it with an ftp.

[satis]

btw, by default when you publish your swf, it creates an html file with all the flash code. This includes all text and links inside the flash, so a search engine will still see this. However, more often than not, what it outputs is horrible, especially the text. The html Flash was generating for a project I was doing was HUGE because it kept repeating the same text over and over again (I guess because of keyframes? I'm not sure what it bases that off of).

What I always do is put a brief but concise description of my page under the Flash intro, as well as any links to places. Some people don't have Flash, after all, so if you don't include normal HTML stuff they'll probably just leave.

[Croc Hunter]

Originally posted by satis
What I always do is put a brief but concise description of my page under the Flash intro, as well as any links to places. Some people don't have Flash, after all, so if you don't include normal HTML stuff they'll probably just leave.
Very good advice satis:
It's good practice to include a "Skip Flash Intro" option.
Doesn't your flash program generate embed html ?. That's nasty. :(

[satis]

Originally posted by Croc Hunter
Doesn't your flash program generate embed html ?. That's nasty. :(

ermm...sorry? I didn't quite catch the meaning of that, my apologies. :) If you're asking if my Flash program generates html, yes, but if there's alot of text it's ugly and huge.