flash website

[blackbox]

When you make a website in flash are you guys putting multiple FLAs linked together or putting different frames on the timeline? Wouldnt different FLA's being linked to diff pages be less of a memory hog?

[ogaac]

I think it's mostly up to personal preference. If you separate your .swf's into different pages and upload them individually, it is a little more search engine friendly and loads faster initially.

However, since you need to load a new .swf each time to navigate to a different page you are actually causing the user's browser to download more stuff, thus decreasing the overall speed.

I prefer separating the .swf's to distinct pages, but it kind of depends on what the website is for. Personal portfolios could probably be a self contained .swf on one page, but a fancy website with a few Flash elements should be broken into separate .swf's.

This is just my opinion, of course, and would be curious to hear others, but that's what I'd do.

[138]

When I build a Flash site I prefer to use an SWF for the majority of the content, but not all. That way there is still some text for search engines to find---just a quick tip.

[ogaac]

When I build a Flash site I prefer to use an SWF for the majority of the content, but not all. That way there is still some text for search engines to find---just a quick tip.

Right, even if you just put a basic HTML navigation at the bottom of your page (which is pretty standard anyways) and separate the .swf files onto different pages it helps search engines find you.

[adninjastrator]

Just to clarify a point made by the OP, on the Web page itself, the .fla file is never used. It's only the .swf file that is placed on the Web site and needs to be uploaded to the server.
Since there is really no such thing as a "Flash" website... only web pages, with Flash content, I prefer to have separate html/php web pages with one or more Flash .swf files on each page. While Flash is great for specific purposes, it does not give you the versatility and comprehensive control over the web page that html and CSS does.
However, having problems with search engines indexing Flash content is NOT an issue or drawback to using Flash. Using swfobject with the Flash content it's possible to pack MORE detailed info about the content than just creating the page in html. That's because you can use "alternate content" that is sort of "over the top" as far as descriptive text goes. Use as much descriptive text as you want, even more than would seem appropriate if the page was being viewed as plain html.
Here's an example a using a single .swf (which is really just an image) as a web page.
http://www.ksowetsuits.com/
What you see displayed (if you have Flash) is a simple image with a little text in it. But view the source code and you'll see paragraph after paragraph, including lists of features and details about this product. All that content is found and indexed by search engines. So if you use Flash and are concerned about SEO, using swfobject is a must.
For more info:
http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/
Best wishes,
Adninjastrator