Automatically create an HTML backup version of your Flash site with Rainbow Live 1.5.1

With the release of Rainbow Live 1.5.1 it’s surprisingly easy to generate an HTML alternative version of your Flash site. This will allow search engines and users without the Flash Player installed to search and navigate through the content, images and links on your site. In the first post we talked about Rainbow’s new Automated Sitemap Generator and now it’s time to introduce the Automated Dataource Generator.

This shows a typical Flash site that can be powered by Rainbow Live

This shows the HTML backup version of your Flash site generated by Rainbow Live

This shows the HTML Backup page without CSS

Being that Flash is a compiled file format it’s not easy for search engines to actually understand the internal structure of your Flash websites. There are tools which allow some internal inspection of .swf files, but they don’t tend to understand anything about the site’s information architecture. Add to this the fact that most Flash sites these days will be using external resources such as data specified in an XML file, the usefulness of accessible content within a .swf file is actually quite minimal.

Furthermore, with the popular new range of internet surfing devices by a certain fruity company that won’t allow Flash content to play in their web browser, the incentive for creating a simple HTML version as a backup alternative to your site becomes even more compelling.

By combining with SWFAddress and SWFObject, Rainbow Live 1.5.1 makes it easy to create an HTML alternative that will automatically transition users from the full Flash version of your site, should they not be able to view it, to something that will alow them to view and navigate through the content on your site.

What also makes this so fantastic is that google and other search egines are now able to index and search through the actual content of your site without having to rely on an expertly chosen domain name or some strategic meta data additions to your HTML page. Now instead of only linking to page titles provided by deep linking, the actual content can be crawled through and will be available to the search engines to match in their search results. At the end of the day this means your site will appear more times and be more relevant to what users are looking for on google and other search engines.

See the tutorial on the Datasource Generator in Rainbow Live 1.5.1 to learn how you can easily make your Flash sites search engine friendly. Learn more about how easy it is to add Rainbow as a CMS to your Flash site, or about all the other benefits of Ranbow Live.