Hank, disclaimer: I didn't say that method works for everybody everywhere, nor that execution is easy. It's also more targeted towards Flash websites, not Flex.
I too think that it's Adobes job to provide a framework to make these things easier for the developer. I don't agree with your UI-design-first approach though. Content should always come first. No content, no UI. At the very least, both should be developed hand in hand. In any case, for an application/website to be truly SEO'ed, you need a HTML site underneath that search engines can spider. This is all about data and nothing else, and it needs a 1:1 relation to the data that the human user is going to get when she clicks on a link presented by search engines (wrapped in a Flex UI or whatever). Cheers, Claus. > You are of course right to suggest building an XHTML version first, as a > strategy, but there are two problems with this. > > 1. One of the issues is that good product design usual requires that you > develop the interface first. The interface drives the content and data > needed. What you are suggesting may help acheive the best underpinnings, > but it is very hard to design a good product if you start with the data. > The best way to design is really to start with the UI, which flex is > very good at. So you end up with Flex code first and you tweak it with > real users etc. So you probably use some kind or remoting model. Now you > are left trying to figure out a good way to make your remoting based > stuff searchable. > > 2. Even if you decide to do it the way you describe, which is to start > out with an XHTML framework, this model really does not fit the remoting > model very well because you cant build a pure XHTML site based around > remoting. So what you are really suggesting is that you cant use > remoting, which is a cornerstone of the Flex development model, and > develop a searchable product. But throwing out the whole concept of > remoting is really not very appealing from a development model. > > Now, I am sure that it is possible to build a framework that would help > to resolve these issues (and it would be great if adobe would develop > such a thing), but certainly just saying use XHTML first would be a very > hard task for most people, without such a framework, to do in a clean > Flex/remoting friendly way. > > Regards, > Hank -- claus wahlers côdeazur brasil http://codeazur.com.br/ http://wahlers.com.br/claus/blog/
