Del Padre Digital
Del Padre Digital is a design firm that specializes in digital media. The company’s new website needed to emulate that core service in both form and function. Del Padre wanted to highlight Flash as a viable platform for an entire website, emulating HTML in basic functionality with features such as deep linking, browser back button support, dynamic content, search engine optimization, and fast-loading content so users can get to the most important information quickly. The company also wanted to capitalize on the raw power of the Flash platform with animation, integrated video support, changing backgrounds, and other rich media content to enhance the user experience visually.
Deep-linking enables users to submit interesting sections to popular social media websites.
Unlike many other website redesigns, the old site was not in need of change because it was performing poorly. On the contrary, 65 percent of Del Padre’s business was commissioned by clients who found the company online. The new site needed to be everything that the old site was, but more. The new and improved delpadre.com went live on June 1, 2008, as a full Flash site that featured a fast-loading dynamic project portfolio and full-screen videos. Most important, the site can be fully indexed by Google and other search engines. This is due largely to its use of SWFAddress, an open-source developer tool that provides deep linking for Flash and Ajax.
I expanded on the basic implementation of SWFAddress to create a system that could not only deep link to site structures created within Flash, but generate and interpret deep links generated on the fly for dynamic content, such as individual items within the portfolio that would move or change on a regular basis. The creator of SWFaddress, Rostislav Hristov, stated that this was one of the best implementations of the SWFAddress since the program’s inception.
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