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Google Weighs in on Image Replacement (sIFR)
July 06, 2007
On the rare occasion when an engine expresses an actual opinion on a real technique, It's a welcome, welcome sight. So imagine my glee when I read Google Webmaster Central Blog's take on dealing with Flash.
While John lamented the mixed signals just last month, we've been asking the question internally for years: From a best practices standpoint, does image replacement stand safely in the DMZ of glorified CSS, or does it boldly encroach the characteristic of "showing engines one thing and users another"?
And that's just the beginning. The real problem, when you're using image replacement, is not the insertion of stylized copy, but instead, what you do with the HTML text you're replacing. Some systems simply let it lie underneath the script-spawned Flash layer, while some use "hidden" status in CSS, while still others pull it off the visible screen and hard-code it somewhere in the -5000px range -- each of which is detectable and grounds for a good spanking if your motives are anything but pure. Traditionally, that left us with the worries of trusting the algorithm to detect our motives.
But forget all that, because today we know, and we know it based on the way all such things are Known -- because it's mentioned in an official Google blog, midstream in a list of "practical suggestions" about how to deal with Flash:
sIFR: Some websites use Flash to force the browser to display headers, pull quotes, or other textual elements in a font that the user may not have installed on their computer. A technique like sIFR still lets non-Flash readers read a page, since the content/navigation is actually in the HTML -- it's just displayed by an embedded Flash object.
This proclamation, coming on the heels of Independence Day, is fitting, because no longer are we bound by the tyranny of not knowing on whose side of the fight sIFR truly sits.
see all posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at July 6, 2007 07:20 AM
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