Links of the Month (August 2009)




The interesting flash'y things of August:




1. Search engine optimization for Flash - the new article by Todd Perkins is a must-read for everyone who cares about good search engine visibility of flash content.

2. Things every Flash developer should know - just the flash site I like by noted Flash guru Grant Skinner.

3. FlashEff 2 review - get acquainted with this great flash animation tool.

4. Flash Fun Pages - lots of fun and nice flash ecards and cartoons. For newbies - to save swf file you like, in Firefox simply click Tools > Page Info > go to Media Tab and save swf file to your computer. Then send it to your friends, view by yourself or publish to your blog\website (don't forget about copyrights :))

5. Cannonballz - the new dimension of flash games. "Cannonballz is the first ever Augmented Reality game using ZugMo Motion Capture Technology, Flash and Facebook to make both you and your friends the stars of the game". Now you are not just a player, you are the part of the game.

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How to insert Flash into PowerPoint

Do you want to enhance your PowerPoint presentation and add Flash object to the slide? That's easy - here are a few ways to do that easily and quickly.

Free tools 

iSpring Free - insert Flash into PowerPoint as simply as clicking one button. Really great tool for both inserting Flash into PP and converting presentations into flash files (swf). 


Insert Flash manually

Click Microsoft Office Button in the top left corner, click PowerPoint Options at the bottom of the menu. Click Popular on the left column of PowerPoint Options window and select Show Developer tab in the Ribbon on the right column. Click OK. 
In the Developer tab, click the icon of hammer and nail in the Controls group for More Controls.  
In the More Controls window, select Shockwave Flash Object in the list and click OK. 


Then use your mouse to draw and resize the control. Right-click the control you draw and click Properties in the right-click menu.


In the alphabetic tab, click the Movie property and type the full drive path in the value column (the blank cell next to Movie), including the file name (e.g. C:\my.swf) or URL (e.g. http://www.mywebsite.com/my.swf)
To make the Flash play automatically when the slide is displayed, set the Playing property to True. To embed the Flash into PowerPoint, set EmbedMovie property to True. 
Now close the Properties window and save your presentation.
On the View tab, in the Presentation Views group, you can click Slide Show or press F5 to preview your presentation.  

Commercial software

If you need something robust for extending your PowerPoint options, easy converting presentations and, as a bonus, easy inserting Flash objects into slides, you can try one of the following commercial tools - maybe you'll find one of them worth buying: iSpring Pro or Wondershare PPT2Flash.

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Security updates for Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader and Acrobat

Adobe reported the release of security patches for Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader and Acrobat, and Adobe AIR. They were categorized as critical because the vulnerability can be used to take control of the affected system. The potential vulnerability of Adobe software was knows since the end of the last year, but exploits emerged last month only. Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in the current versions of Adobe Flash Player (v9.0.159.0 and v10.0.22.87) for Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems, Adobe AIR 1.5.1 and earlier versions, Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.1.2 and earlier 9.x versions.

Adobe Flash Player version number, can be verified on this page. If you use multiple browsers, perform the check for each browser you have installed on your system.

Find details and download patches here.

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