again as I said depends what its for ...surely you wouldnt have google all in flash or ebay, but for an entertainment, fashion, or anything thats non portal why not.
The main reason people avoid flash is based on download time and if people have the plug in to begin with...but eventually it wont be an issue within time .
I was designing when flash came out and it was the hardest thing getting people to want it cause of size but now hey ..get a faster line is the mentality of
"certain type" of sites ...music, fashin, entertainment, gaming..... but for say adult sites , and big sales sites portal then i agree make sure that old lady with a 10 year old pc on aol running i.e 3 can get on
so if someone is just undecided and not sure then just make a hybrid sites like
so many others, or have 2 versions, have flash sniffers so if they dont have flash which "most people do anymore, I would hope" they will see an alternative image. best of both worlds
as far as that article thats always been possible... you can also type in cat.jpg or dog.gif or even 1.pdf and get results, with that your arebetter off relying on your keywords and title and maybe some blind text.
forgot to mention actually looking up something on the basis of swf is just flat out dumb for 2 reasons:
Not everyone labels their swf.file relevant to the site.
And The big problem with this is your are pulling up the file most of the times not the page so your looking at this swf file only and dont have any control over it as far as how its layed out it may be oversized, not embedded.