What was hot in IT world 2008

The last week of the year is the best time to resume everything that happened in the tech world during the year. So, let’s look at some statistics represented as flash charts to learn what was at the top this year.

Top websites 2008

What are the most popular places of the Web world? The most popular websites according to Alexa ranking and their daily reach (% of global internet users who visit the sites):




Top search engines 2008

Search is an integral part of the Web. Search engines are the integral parts of our life. What search engines were used the most this year?




Top web browsers 2008

Thing which opens the Web for us is a web-browser. Which is the most popular this year?




Top software 2008

Top software of this year is evidently various anti-virus programs. What else was in greatest demand this year?




Top PC games 2008

Of course, computer world can’t be imagined without games. Leaders of this year among the PC games are below:




That’s how computer world lived this year.

All flash charts are created and published with Animated Chart software.

Merry Christmas to all!

Permanent Link

Best Christmas Flash games

I have such a pre-Christmas mood today that I don't want to think about serious things. That's why I've decided to write about such not serious yet 'flashy' stuffs as online flash games. And according to the season, these will be Christmas flash games. So, here is a list of my favorite Christmas games. Enjoy playing!

Penguin Rush



Nice winter-styled racing game with good graphics. Race, dive, rush and win!

Santa Balls 3D




Matching game - swap Christmas balls by clicking them to form a row or column of three or more same-colored balls.

Arctic Antics



Christmas arcade-style game. To help animals to get to the pool is not so easy as it seems - the diving board is very slippery!

Snow Line



Amazing logic game. Draw the snow line so that Santa can collect all the presents and get to the finish.

Snowflake Designer




Eternal Christmas fun - making paper snowflakes. But who needs paper when we have Flash? ;)

Attack of the Sprouts



A little dumb yet funny game where you have to defend your Christmas dinner from the attacking sprouts. Train your reaction!

Thin Ice



Interesting game - smth. about sports, smth. about arcade. Your aim is to cut holes to trap monsters into the water. It's not as easy as it seems. Also, I like the old-fashioned design - great to remember the childhood :)

Santa's Apprentice




Rather addictive skill game where you help Santa bounce from house to house and deliver presents to the nice children which live in green houses.

Santa's Workshop



I like this game for its nice design and true Christmas spirit. Nevertheless, it's rather easy. So, if it's too easy for you, offer your kids to play it - they'll be pleased!

Frost Bite 2




Winter-styled platform game. Aim is to climb to the top of the mountain. So, if your winter holidays aren't the trip to the mountain resort, enjoy climbing at least in this game :)

Merry Christmas and happy playing!

Permanent Link

Flash MP3 Players features comparison

Today I want to offer you a research on flash mp3 players for publishing to website. Actually, I did this research for myself when I needed to make a flash audio player for website. But I decided to share the results with the readers of my blog.

So, I've tested four flash sound players
for website: Aleo FlashMP3 Player Builder, Fun SoundPlayer Maker, Flash WAmp, and SWiSH Jukebox. I've picked them up from the list of flash music players at download.com. I've examined the following parameters:

- available player skins,

- available formats of result player file,

- availability of "button" player configuration (ON\OFF only),

- possibility of voice recording,

- availability of using audio stream (e.g. online radio),

- skin customization (what parameters of flash player design can be customized),

- playback control (what options of tracks playback user can define).

That's the results of my mini-research in short. I don't want to determine a leader – everyone has its own needs and has to choose software that would meet them the best. As you know from my previous posts, my choice was Fun SoundPlayer Maker – this flash player creator is perfect for me. I hope my table will help you to choose your perfect flash mp3 player. Try them now and choose the best! :)


Permanent Link

Top 3 ways to SEO Flash

In spite of the fact that Flash websites is less SEO and browser friendly than usual HTML sites, more and more people want to use Flash elements for their websites. Why? The main reason is that flash animation, menus and buttons are visually appealing and help to attract visitors' attention. Your visitors and customers want not only good content, they also want it to be in a nice "wrapper". And flash is exactly this wrapper. Developers like Flash because it allows to place more content in a less space without spoiling page structure, it's perfect for presenting multimedia content and can be easily combined with such technologies as MySQL, XML, PHP, etc. Besides, flash is not so unSEOable as it's often believed to be. Here are the top 3 ways to make flash content seo-friendly.

  1. Using CSS element DIV with the content which can be accessed and indexed by search engines along with using JavaScript SWFObject to detect user's (or browser's) ability to handle Flash. It allows both search engine bots and users without Flash plug-in to view non-flash content, while users with Flash player installed will see enhanced Flash content. This method let you kill two birds with one stone. You'll have no problem both with search engines, and with users who can't (or just don't want to) see flash content – they'll still get full accessibility and functionality. Non-flash content within DIV can contain everything you're able to add to usual HTML page, including links, text, images, etc.
  2. Creating an alternative HTML version of the pure Flash sites. Maybe, this'll add you work, but this also will give you better rankings and visibility. As well as with DIV element, creating an alternative HTML content will ensure that your site will be indexed by search engine spiders and viewed even by people without Flash player plug-in, while other visitors will see its Flash version. The best way is still to create each page as HTML with installed Flash movie, even though this won't have a smoothness of all-Flash sites.
  3. Using SWFAddress for deep linking. This smart developer tool creates virtual URLs for Flash websites that enables visitors to bookmark certain pages, send links via e-mail or IM, use browser history and back/forward/reload buttons. Also, this helps you with search engines as they can find specific content on a website. To learn details, read SWFAddress blog.

Also, don't forget basic SEO techniques like META tags and title tag, building inbound links, etc. and I hope your rankings will as high as you dream :)

Permanent Link

7 features your slideshow maker should have

Slideshow is a series of still images delivered one after another. Slide shows in their original meaning were the series of slides shown using slide projectors. But in recent years slideshow is mainly associated with computers. Slideshows have become the important part of web design. It's not surprising because slideshow is a great way to turn common digital images into an eye-catching "movie". Nevertheless, slideshow can be not only eye candy. It can be a marketing tool, an educational method, a way to attract attention to one's blog or social network profile. And, of course, it remains one of the most popular ways to save memory about the brightest moments of life.

The main things you need to create your slideshow are a great idea, a batch of digital photos, sound track (either music or voice record) and a good slideshow creation software. Regardless of what your slideshow is designed for, your slideshow maker should have the following features:

· Slide transitions. This feature may be unnecessary for an educational slideshow, but if you create a slideshow for your blog or profile, slideshow of your child's birthday party or honeymoon - transition effects will be of great use. They make slideshow more vivid, add personality and dynamism to your "photo story".

· Text. Text comments, titles or even date the picture taken on give more details to a slideshow, especially if it has no voice comments. Maybe your wedding slideshow doesn't need titles on each slide, but it's difficult to imagine promotional or educational slideshows without a text.

· Hyperlinks. This feature is indispensable for creating promotional slideshows. For example, you create a slideshow of your company's products. It's great if you're able to assign hyperlinks which will redirect users to the products' web pages. As you see, it's better if your slideshow creator allows to assign not only a total URL to the whole slideshow, but also to assign different URLs to each slide.

· Navigation buttons. Great feature which can be of use for every slideshow type. It gives your audience more control for better perception of your slideshow content and for its convenience.

· Sound. Adding background sound is an important feature regardless of slideshow's aim. Event slideshows can't be perfect without a corresponding music, educational slideshows and business presentations are mainly accompanied with sound (e.g. voice comments).

· Timing control. Timing control means that your slideshow creation software allows you to control how long each slide displays. It's really necessary when you add a background sound with voice comments or narration. In this case timing control helps you to synchronize pictures with comments. Even if slideshow has no background sound, timing control is very useful - it enables you to show one image longer than another, choose how long a transition should last, etc.

· Speaking of web design, we must consider not only how to create a slideshow, but also how to embed it into a web page. Thus, your slideshow creator must allow both easy creating slideshow and easy publishing it to the Web. And its key feature is making web-ready slideshows which can be embedded in a web site without programming skills. Usually, slideshow for web publishing is created in Flash format (.swf file).

My favorite slideshow makers that meet all requirements are:

FlashSlider (Flarium) $29
IncrediShow (IncrediTools) $69.95
CoffeeCup Photo Gallery (CoffeeCup) $39
Flash Gallery Factory (Wondershare) $49.95

Download free trials, make your choice and share your impressions in comments!

Permanent Link

Flash Graffiti Creator


Do you want to create graffiti-styled logotypes and texts? Try The Graffiti Creator. This Flash app allows to create and customize your graffiti with a few mouse clicks. Really great and easy to use tool. Only thing that I miss is ability to save the graffiti as an image file, now The Graffiti Creator has only Print option. Nevertheless, it's a great flash fun!


Permanent Link

Adobe Media Player 1.5 is available


Adobe Inc. released Adobe Media Player 1.5 - a cross-platform desktop application designed to play back streamed or downloaded FLV or MPEG-4 video content online or offline. Adobe Media Player offers new great features both for viewers and content publishers. Viewers will enjoy enhanced features for discovering, subscribing and sharing video content, notification and video management features. Content publishers will appreciate improved publishing, validation and reporting tools, enhanced content protection etc. Also, Adobe Media Player 1.5 allows playing SWF files from a hard drive without opening browser and in a full-screen mode. Adobe Media Player is completely free to download and is available for both Windows and Mac platforms.

Permanent Link

Flash myths and Flash facts

The more popular Flash® technology becomes, the more rumors and myths are born about it. I want to disprove 5 widespread Flash myths which annoys me most of all.

Myth #1 Flash files can’t be indexed by search engines, and thus can’t be used for SEO.

This myth is very durable and many people believe it to be the holy truth in spite of all the information about Flash indexing. The truth is that the attempts of indexing flash were made back in 2004. And now, textual content and URLs in the Flash files can be indexed by any search engine by utilizing Macromedia's Flash Search Engine SDK. Google has been using a new technology from Adobe® to improve Flash indexing for almost two months and Yahoo! is next in turn. Read Google’s post to its Webmaster Central Blog and Adobe’s press release to learn details about the improved Flash indexing. And what about a non-textual content: if a Flash file includes images with text, search engines don’t index this text (as well as they don’t index text in images of other file formats). So, indexing Flash content is not too much behind indexing other content. And a few words about SEO and SEO-friendly content. Each SEO specialist knows that content itself (i.e. text) isn’t the key factor of high search engines rankings. The more important factors are targeted keywords, meta tags, title and the most important criteria used by search engines to rank your web page – inbound links which can be successfully built both for websites with Flash and without it.

Myth #2 Using Flash on a web page means slower loading and larger file size.

This information is completely out of date. Less and less users are on slow connections such as dial-up, most of us have broadband access. Rapid development of data transfer, storage and processing also makes Flash applications faster from day to day. Large size of the file is a myth for people who’ve never created their own page in Flash. Size of an HTML shell is small, and size of a Flash file itself (without built-in audio and video) is not much larger than the size of comparable HTML content. Of course, if you want to have audio and video instead of raw text, the size of your web page will increase. But it’s natural and it has nothing to do with the Flash itself.

Myth #3 It’s impossible to navigate within a Flash movie using Back and Forward buttons.

Yes, we’re used to see Flash pages without an internal Flash navigation. But it doesn’t mean that this navigation is impossible. If you still believe this myth, you’ll be surprised hearing that this problem was solved in 2001(!) by Robert Penner. Here’s his explanation:

Normally, pressing the back button on a Flash page takes you out of the movie. I don't like that! In order to use the browser back button, you have to generate a history of web pages. I use a hidden frame to store HTML pages that generate a browser history... I created one HTML page for each section of the movie that I want in the history. On each HTML page is a little piece of Javascript that sets a variable in the Flash movie. After the HTML sends the signal to Flash, it's up to you to notice and navigate to the appropriate section…

Myth #4 Not everyone can experience Flash content and that decreases your audience size.

That’s true, not everyone has Flash® Player installed – 1% of all Internet users doesn’t have it and can’t render SWF. However, I think 99% of Internet users is enough for you to find your target audience :). Adobe® Flash® Player’s penetration rate is immense, view the Adobe’s statistics below and don’t worry about your audience any more.

If you’re still anxious about it, you can create an alternative non-Flash content. For example, SWFObject library helps users without the Flash plug-in see a working HTML page. Creating and alternative content is also great for people who are still don’t sure about Flash indexing – HTML content will surely be indexed by search engines. Also, use Flash Player Detection Kit to detect the version of Flash Player installed on a user’s computer, and, if needed, to then install the latest version of Flash Player. Use Flash Player Express Install to seamlessly upgrade users to the latest version of the Flash Player without leaving you site.

Myth #5 Flash means annoying ads, banners and sites with irritating music or videos.

Blaming Flash for ads and banners is the same thing that blaming jpeg for ugly pictures or mp3 for music you don’t like. Flash is only the method of delivering content. And what content is delivered is up only to its developers, not to technology they use.

Permanent Link

Flash CS4 Professional Trial Download

Flash CS4 Professinal Trial is available for free download. At last the download link is really working. Remember that you should be registered at Adobe website to download the products.
The first thing that surprised me after starting download was the Java applet (Akamai Download Manager) used to download files. I seemed it to be a little improper for Adobe. But I understood their choice after having seen the file size - 888,9 Mb (!!!). This download manager lets pause and resume download, that is very important with so huge files.
If the download through the Java Downloader fails, simply download this URL without Akamai with any other download manager (for example, DTA for Firefox), but register at Adobe first:
http://trials.adobe.com/Applications/FlashPro/CS4/Win/ADBEFLPRCS4Win_LS1.7z (Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Download Link).
Have fun trying Flash CS4 and share your impressions with me in your comments.

Permanent Link

Best places to download flash tools

I have some favorite directories of flash tools (or swf - shockwave flash - tools) where I download flash software - both free flash tools and paid ones. I use and recommend the following software directories because of their smart system - all tools are divided into categories and you can easily find what you need.

ALL Flash Tools – comprehensive flash directory with an extensive list of flash tools, flash components and even a few articles and flash tutorials.

Flash Wanted – this flash directory offers flash components, JSFL extensions, SWF applets, FLA sources and flash related software downloads.

My Flash Soft - flash software: flash design, presentation and slideshow makers, game creators, animating, sounding and other flash development tools.

SnapFiles – all software is handy divided into shareware and freeware to simplify searching. Contains lots of web authoring tools including software for flash development.

Swftools – the ultimate directory of flash tools, apps, utilities. Here you can find flash software, flash freeware tools, flash sitegallery and flash tutorials.

Download.com – probably the most popular software downloads directory. Of course, it has flash tools section. Squeeze yourself through sponsored links and you'll find lots of useful flash utilities.

Permanent Link

How to make a podcast or audio blog post in Blogger

Do you want your blog visitors to hear your voice? Do you need to represent your post as audio? Do you want to give your readers a choice for their convenience, so that they could either read you post or listen to it? If yes, read this post to learn how to post audio to blog.

There are two popular techniques of audio bloggingpodcasting and using flash audio players. What to use – voice podcast or audio post – depends on what your aim is.

Podcasting

If you want your visitors to receive sound files through RSS feed, you should create a podcast. It can be done by adding URL(s) of your audio files as the enclosure links to your post. To do this, go to your Settings, open Formatting tab and set the "Show Link fields" option to "Yes". After adding your file as an enclosure link, you blog becomes a podcast. Now reader of your RSS will see your podcasts as a small audio player and be able to listen to your message directly in RSS reader. To get into technical details and learn how to further customize your podcast, visit Blogger Help Center. It's a great stuff for everyone who wants to send his voice posts to RSS subscribers. The only disadvantage of Blogger podcasting is that the player to hear your audio post can be seen by RSS readers only, not by usual blog readers. How to mend it?

Flash mp3 player

If you want your visitors to listen to your voice message directly in a post, the best solution for you is to embed a flash audio player to stream voice. Voice is streamed online similarly to any other mp3 files with the help of flash mp3 player. To record voice as mp3, you have to use special voice recording software or a good flash mp3 player maker. I use Fun SoundPlayer Maker software which allows to record voice, convert it to mp3 and embed to a flash audio player without using any external voice recorders. So, how to create a flash button for turning sound on/off with Fun SoundPlayer Maker and embed it into your post? All you have to do is to choose suitable player template, select an existing audio file or record a new audio post directly in the program, customize player and save it as an SWF file for further embedding into blog. Detailed instruction how to post audio player to blog and tips on creating flash mp3 players and hosting your files you can find in one of my previous posts – How to embed audio into a blog or MySpace. To let your visitors download original mp3 file directly from the post without subscribing to RSS (like podcast players do), simply host both swf player and mp3 file and assign a download link for mp3. It'll look like this.




Download mp3 file

So, it's up for you to decide what technology of posting audio to blog you need more. Or, maybe, you'd like mp3 podcast and flash mp3 player to supplement each other. My post has both embedded mp3 player and a voice podcast (you can subscribe to my RSS feed to see how it works).

P.S. Both podcasting and flash mp3 player can be used for streaming music files as well as voice recordings.


Permanent Link

Adobe Flash Player 10 now available

Adobe released the new version of its Flash Player. Flash Player 10 top new features:

  • Built-in support for 3D effects
  • Custom filters and effects
  • Advanced text support with flexible text layout engine
  • Enhanced sound APIs for dynamic sound generation
  • Enhanced drawing APIs
  • Enhanced file upload and download APIs
  • Enhanced hardware acceleration
  • New vector data type and more…

It's a great news for the Flash community, isn't it?

The main security point of Flash Player 10 is clickjacking security - vulnerabilities of the previous versions could give a hacker access to a user's webcam and microphone. That's why users of Flash Player 9 and earlier are strongly recommended to install Adobe Flash Player 10

.

Permanent Link

Best Firefox add-ons for Flash developers and other useful Flash development tools

Here is my list of what helps in Flash development.

The best Firefox Flash plugins are:

Flash Tracer – allows seeing all the output generated by the "trace" flash functions while running any .swf Flash file in your browser. To run Flash Tracer, you need Flash Player debug installed in Firefox. Also, you have to enter a path to the file with debug info, for example C:\Documents and Settings\{user}\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\Logs\flashlog.txt.

Flash Switcher – allows switching between various Flash Player versions with a few clicks.

Web Developer – must have plugin for all web developers, but can be of use for Flash developers too. I like resize option and lots of other web developer tools also simplify everyday work.

Load Time Analyzer – allows developers to measure and graph how long web pages take to load in Firefox.

Muspell – allows testing variables in flash files in addition to modifying their values while they run to provide alternative methods of debugging and testing their flash applications. The only problem is that the last available version of Muspell is for FF 2.

Tamper Data – allows tracking Flash activity in Flash websites which load external data or communicate with backend scripts.

HBXTracer - helps developers to test HitBox implementations on HTML pages and Flash content.

Search plugins – here you can find five amazing Firefox search plugins for Flash and Flex developers to search ActionScript 3, Flex 2, Flex 3 LiveDocs, Adobe Labs and Macromedia Flash 8 directly from Firefox search bar.

Two more tools for Flash developers I like:

Charles - is especially useful for Adobe Flash developers as you can view the contents of LoadVariables, LoadMovie and XML loads. Charles also has native support for Flash Remoting (AMF0 and AMF3) that makes it better for debugging and tracing .swf files than, for example, Firebug add-on.

SWFAddress - SWFAddress is a small, but powerful library that provides deep linking for Flash. It's a developer tool, allowing creation of unique virtual URLs that can point to a website section or an application state.

I hope my list will help you in Flash development and I wait for you to add your favorite tools to the list!

Permanent Link

A4Desk 6.16 – Flash builder

The new version of professional flash builder software is released today. A4Desk is a flash builder for webmasters and anyone else which helps create flash websites, flash intros and flash presentations. Easy to use interface requires no coding knowledge and Flash experience.

A4Desk offers:

  • 184 website templates which make creation of flash site possible even for the most inexperienced users;
  • Ability to create or modify more than one web page at the same time;
  • A library of sample clipart SWF and image files;
  • Tab for HTML and Meta Tag Settings;
  • Ability to preview the site in a browser;
  • Option to load text from a text file;
  • 10 music loops for background music;
  • 6 Language interface.

Developer: A4Desk.com

Download link

Permanent Link

Flash for iPhone. What kind of Flash do we need?

The hottest news of the recent Flash on the Beach is that Adobe is really developing Flash player for the Apple's iPhone. Sr. Director of Engineering at Adobe Systems Paul Betlem confirmed that Adobe is really developing a Flash Player for the iPhone. There was said nothing about date and time, because now the decision is up to Apple. As it was implied, Adobe can finish its work in short time, the only thing they're waiting for is Apple's approval. Nevertheless, I don't think Adobe would begin developing Flash for iPhone without having hope that Apple would approve it.

The most discussed question now is not whether Apple's going to include Flash or not. It's whether people need Flash on iPhone or not. As always, when it comes to Flash, there are only a few people who say "I don't care", the most of iPhone users run to extremes like "No way. I don't need Flash" or "OMG! That's what I'm eagerly awaiting for!".

So, what are their pros and cons? The main con is that Flash is CPU-intensive, or, to say easier, it use CPU like crazy. The main pro is that Flash is an integral part of the Web and if Apple wants to give iPhone users the real Web in a palm, it has to make Flash available for iPhone.

The truth always lies somewhere in between, between the two extreme views. Yes, the kind of Flash we use on our PCs is surely not suitable for iPhone, it just won't have enough resources to work well. But Flash for iPhone won't be the same, that's obvious. I believe it's developed according to iPhone capability and performance. So, what Flash is needed to satisfy everyone?

To satisfy Steve Jobs (Apple CEO), Adobe has to develop the middle product between Adobe's Mobile Flash (Flash Lite), which "is not capable of being used with the Web" and a traditional Flash for the PC which is too resource-intensive.

To satisfy every iPhone user, I think there must be Flash on the iPhone but it must have an option to be toggled on/off, or blocked if needed, or simply require click to be played (e.g. like YouTube). Then it'll be OK both for users who want to browse Flash content and for those who don't want to.

Apple claims iPhone to be a "breakthrough Internet device". And in spite of all the criticism, it's impossible to imagine today's Internet without Flash and, thus, it's impossible to imagine a breakthrough Internet device without having Flash player too.

Permanent Link

How to embed audio into a blog or MySpace

Do you want to enhance your Blogger, Wordpress, MySpace, etc.? Do you want to add some music to your posts or profiles? Embedding music into your blog or MySpace profile is really easy with Fun SoundPlayer Maker tool. You need no special plug-ins – just an SWF sound player and its HTML code. You may ask: "Where can I get them?". This program will give them to you. So, let's go into technical details.

To embed audio into a web page, there are three steps:

  1. Creating Flash sound player;
  2. Uploading SWF player to the Web;
  3. Inserting Flash audio player code into a web page.




Does that look difficult? Actually, it's not. All you need to create an SWF music player and its HTML code is to use Fun SoundPlayer Maker utility. It lets you create and customize web sound players and buttons with some mouse clicks. Even the worst dummy can create flash music player with its help – no programming or scripting, simply choosing a button look, selecting sound file to embed and… that's all. Yes, it's really that easy. The program gives you web ready SWF file of your audio player and a piece of HTML code. Select "Save SWF and copy an HTML code to clipboard" in publishing options.

The next step – to get a flash mp3 player working, we should upload an SWF file to the Web. When it comes to the website owners, we say – upload an SWF player to your server. But if you're a usual blogger without your own server, what should you do? I use Google sites to store my files. Go to http://sites.google.com and create your own website. That's where you can store your files. Attach the file of your flash sound player to the created website and go to your blog or MySpace profile.

That's the third step – open an HTML editor of your blog post and paste the player code from the clipboard. It will look like this.

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0" height="34" width="84"><param name="movie" value="myplayer.swf"><param name="quality" value="high"><embed src=" myplayer.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="34" width="84"></embed></object>

Then, go to your Google site and copy the link of the attached SWF file. In Internet Explorer, simply click the file, open it with IE, and copy the link address in the address bar. In Firefox, it's easier to right click on the file, in the popup menu click "Copy Link Location", and get the link address. Paste this link into your code as a player source (replace the name of your SWF file with this link):

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0" height="34" width="84"><param name="movie" value="myplayer.swf"><param name="quality" value="high"><embed src="
http://sites.google.com/site/yourgooglesite/Home/myplayer.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="34" width="84"></embed></object>

That's all, your audio player is successfully embedded to your blog or MySpace.

Tips: 1) Select player templates with an embedded sound source. 2) As most of the blog editors don't support JavaScript, select standard compliant markup in player publishing options. 3) While posting your player, you will see nothing in a visual post editor. You'll see only the code in an HTML editor. Don't worry, that's normal. You'll be able to test player in a post preview. 4) Make sure that your Google site is shared for public view, otherwise your blog visitors won't see you flash content.

Permanent Link

Must have flash tools for website owners and bloggers

The extensive lists of flash tools in flash software directories make website owners and bloggers hesitate what tool to choose to create flash elements and embed them into a web page. In this post, I want to list my own selection of the most helpful flash website tools – tools for creating flash media players, flash animation and graphics effects, flash slideshows and flash graphs. Each of these utilities is a highly ranked swf tool used by web developers and general users. But the most important for me is that they are easy-to-use tools with intuitive interface and great features set. I’ve divided all the tools in some categories depending of what they are used for.

1. Fla
sh tools for creating flash media players and embedding audio or video to a web page:

• flash mp3 player creators:

Fun SoundPlayer Maker - allows you to create Flash music players and buttons for your website.

SWiSH Jukebox - converts your MP3s to cool Flash sound players at the click of a button.

Website Music Player - easily add music to your Website with this advanced flash mp3 player.

FlashWAmp - transforms any original Winamp skin to Flash sound player for publishing background music to sites.

• flash video player creators:

VLC Media Player - a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats.

JW FLV Media Player - an easy and flexible way to add video and audio to your website.

CoffeeCup Web Video Player - convert your movies to Flash and get them on the Web.

2. Flash animation tools:

CoffeeCup Flash Firestarter - quickly creates complex text and image effects with just a few clicks of the mouse.

SWiSH Max - everything you need to create stunning fully interactive Flash animations. You can create shapes, text, buttons, movie clips, and motion paths.

IncrediFlash XTreme 1.0 - filters and blend modes, 100+ text effects, videos, music, sounds, interactivities, layer effects.

3. Flash slideshow makers:

Wondershare Flash SlideShow Builder - helps you create elegant flash slideshows, flash photo albums, flash photo galleries, etc.

Amara Slideshow Builder - developed to help create and design Adobe Flash Player compatible photo slideshows and photo albums.

CoffeeCup Photo Gallery - an easy-to-use photo gallery creator for a website.

FlashSlider - make flash slide shows with photo and sounds, and share them on the web in a few minutes.

4. Flash charts creators:

Animated Chart - generates animation charts as movies in Adobe (Macromedia) Flash™ format for publishing them to web sites.

XML-SWF Charts - a simple, yet powerful tool to create attractive web charts and graphs from dynamic XML data.

Swiff Chart – an easy-to-use tool which lets you create animated charts in Macromedia Flash format.

AmiChart - create animated column, line and pie charts with just a couple of clicks of your mouse.

These flash tools can help you to create an attractive website content and make your web page or blog eye-catching and unusual.

Permanent Link