I'm not trying to be a complete "glass is half empty" kind of guy, so if you want to build a Flex message board, go for it. But I do think there are substantial reasons that you haven't seen a successful one yet out in the wild (or has anyone seen one at all?).
> Is SEO still an issue when writing a Flex application? I would argue that > it's not. > A) Google (Yahoo coming soon if not already) now indexes content within a > SWF. This includes dynamic content as well. Using dynamic deep linking and a > site map that points to different content in the SWF helps a great deal with > this. Except nobody has gotten this to work yet (I assume it will work eventually, but right now it's basically a pipe dream in the real world). See: http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/?p=1617 So yeah, in the future SEO might become less of an issue with Flex sites, but for now it's as big an issue as it's ever been, and for me is still a deal breaker if the site requires indexing. > B) If A isn't enough, you could always use mod_rewrite (or similar > technology) to take a link structure and pass parameters down into a SWF to > determine the view state and content. In addition, the server side script > could print an html version of the content in the background which would > allow search engines to index the content and give non-flash users access to > the information as well. The only down side to this approach is you can not > update the URL bar while the user browses through the application since > anchor links are not passed through to the server (to my knowledge). This can > be compensated for by displaying a "link to this page" in the application. Yeah, so this has long been the only real way to make your site search engine friendly, and it certainly works, but in the end you're building two websites, one for the search engine and a completely different one in Flex for the users. Why bother building the flex one then? esp if the application doesn't use anything that makes Flex/Flash stand out? If you have a forum that was based on sharing music or video, then maybe I could understand wanting to go with Flex (although I'd probably still argue for just embedding little widgets in HTML). But a standard forum works very well as an HTML app with a scattering of AJAX. Esp when you compare the text capabilities, stuff like HTML links, inline images within blocks of text, good support of rich formatting within text blocks. It's all stuff that's a no brainer with HTML, but either works sub-par or not at all in flash player. > Anyways, sorry I couldn't answer your original question better. But I think > the idea of a Flex based forum is definitely a realizable idea, and I didn't > want you to give up on it because of a few dissenters. :) certainly don't let me tell you what you can and can't do. If you want to build it, go for it, just be aware of what you're getting yourself into. And report back on your progress if you decide to take the plung! Doug
