Silverlight SEO
time to read 1 min | 104 words
One of the reasons that people tell you to avoid Silverlight is the SEO cost. Since Justin’s blog is written in Silverlight, I thought that I might take it for a spin in Lynx, the text only browser, and see what Google sees.
My blog in Lynx:
Justin’s blog is Lynx. His actually looks better than mine in Lynx :-).
![image_thumb[1]](file:///C:/Users/Ayende/AppData/Local/Temp/WindowsLiveWriter1286139640/supfiles908ADCA/image[5].png "image_thumb[1]")
Comments
Yes, but still no luck in iPad, Android, Symbian, iPhone, Windows Mobile, or even the upcoming Windows Phone 7! When not even MS is supporting it on its own mobile device, I am seriously doubting the future of Silverlight in the browser for mainstream use. For LOB apps? Yes. For mainstream web apps? No.
Ugh, your blog site loads up instantly while his is SLOOOOWWW. I hate Silverlight's "Let's dump everything in a huge-ass xap file" deployment story.
@Jim, It's not a huge-ass file, it's a huge ass-file.
All his content is in the HTML Doc, which is why google can pick it up. The same thing can be achieved by flash. So im not sure what the point of this blog post is...
From an SEO point of view, yes Flash and Silverlight blow.
Just reiterating, the Silverlight sweet spot continues to be non-websites (but web apps). Using Justin's blog just encourages people to do the dumb ass stuff with Silverlight (liuke people did/do with Flash). having the majority of a site that is perfectly capable in HTML is just silly to do with a RIA. Remember what the "A" in RIA stands for.
I read though some of his blog and he's clearly a smart guy. But his website is such a blatant misuse of silverlight... In fact, not only does he doesn't use any features of silverlight to boost the user experience, the site just looks like... ass. You'd expect a site developed in silverlight to have a bunch of neat UX and great design, but that just isn't the case with that blog. There is no reason at all for this site to be developed in sivlerlight.
Yes, silverlight is very good for general deploymen of specific user interfaces. Previously, it was hard to get WinForms/WPF applications distributed, and Asp.Net was not easy to work with in all situations.
Silverlight is the dream for interactive client applications, and also media streaming.
However not very good for general purpose web sites.
Kamran: as i understand it, i will mot be able to use silverlight in the browseer on a windows phone 7. That means i can mot browse the mentioned blog in a Windows Phone 7.
The app development though, is done with Silverlight.
Ayende, you should really stop using this stupid lynx browser and use a modern browser like links2 or w3m ;)
Comment preview