Are you fond of Flash? Or electronic music? Even if neither, I think it'll be interesting for you to look at this amazing Flash guide.
A new version of Flash Guide to Electronic Music was published by Ishkur at techno.org. Maybe it's the most detailed guide to all electronic music genres. It contains examples of every music style described and a tutorial for newbies. Interface is intuitive and clear and... you'd better click the screenshot below and try it yourself!
Flash news that impressed me this month:
1. FluidHTML - "a very powerful markup language that you can use to build most anything. Our intepreter reads instructions from the markup and sends instructions to Flash plugin." So, you can create Rich Internet Applications as easy as write a page in HTML. Very tempting, isn't it? One more benefit is that the problem "how to SEO Flash" can become the past with FluidHTML, because the new markup language will be searchable and indexable by search engines. The project is in private beta now, and I'm eagerly waiting for open beta to try this promising technology.
2. Adobe Labs Ideas for Flash Catalyst launched - "This initial launch of Adobe Labs Ideas allows Adobe Flash Catalyst users to vote on feature requests and share new ideas with the development team and user community".
3. Flash Websites Gallery - do you need ideas or inspiration for creating your new website. Or maybe you simply like to discover new interesting websites? Koflash.com Flash websites gallery is a nice place for both gaining inspiration and for satisfying curiosity.
4. 28 Interesting Flash Preloaders - "I am going to show some Interesting flash sites which will never bored you in the loading time; in fact, the loading time of these sites will amuse you".
5. Sonoflash Audio Flash Components - interesting Flash audio technology. "Unlike all other Audio Flash Components that still use mp3’s the Sonoflash AS3 algorithm allows developers to embed fully interactive sounds that generate real time sound in direct response to any movement by a user. ... The sounds available at Sonoflash are typically one tenth of the size of an equivalent mp3 file".
Happy discovering to you :)
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.
PdfMeNot also offers:
1. Easy linking to existing PDF files. Simply add http://pdfmenot.com/view/
before the URL of PDF file (e.g. http://pdfmenot.com/view/http://example.com/example.pdf) to view .pdf as SWF movie and save it if needed.
2. Bookmarklet and Firefox add-on: they do the same - convert pdf links on a web page so that they can be viewed with PdfMeNot (i.e. automatically adds the link I mentioned above to all pdf links on the page). The difference is that installed Firefox addon do that automatically for every page you visit, while bookmarklet lets to convert links only when you need it. The converted links will be marked with a small icon.
3. Javascript for bloggers and webmasters for converting PDFs they link to.
4. PDF viewer which can be inserted into a webpage.
Go to pdfmenot.com for more details.
PdfMeNot is a great tool for viewing PDF files everywhere even without Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader. Nevertheless, take note that it's PDF Viewer only, result SWF files don't have Print or Search options.
My best finds of June for you:
1. 50 Stunningly Creative Interactive Flash Websites - "In the world of Flash-based web applications, there are an endless number of possibilities. Flash is a platform which allows for creativity to flow into a website. Interactive is one way that Flash websites are set away from the rest. Here are 50 amazing interactive and creative Flash websites."
2. Flash Bookmarks - must to be bookmarked by everyone who's interested in flash. Bookmark this site and you'll get tons of bookmarks in one. Everything about Flash, Flex, Air from across the Web, sorted by date and category for easier search.
3. Most Wanted Flash Tutorials - 5 great tutorials for beginners which will help you to complete Flash common tasks such as how to create Flash preloader, how to create sliding content in Flash..etc.
4. Free Flash Photo Gallery - "You don't need the Flash software for editing the gallery. You can easily add, edit or delete pictures by editing the xml file in Notepad. All images are loaded externally. You can add unlimited number of images. Creating your own Flash photo gallery has never been easier! These photo albums include a simple fade-in and fade-out transition effect for the photos."
5. How to Change Flash Chart after Publishing to the Web - Learn how to change already published Flash chart. You can change flash chart published to a web page even without editing its HTML code. Read the tips and advices how to make desired changes to your web chart in the easiest and quickest way.
Have fun!
There are several ways to add a Flash object to the sidebar of your Blogspot blog. 1. If you create your flash object yourself with any tool that provides both .swf file and html code of the object, use this way: Go to Blogger Dashboard > Layout > Add a Gadget > HTML/Javascript. Paste your code to the gadget editor field and specify the correct file location (.swf file must be uploaded to the Web – to any file storage you use, for example Google Sites). Save the gadget and you're done. 2. If you have only a flash file you want to embed and don't have its html code, you can use Widgetbox to create a flash widget for blogger. Go to Widgetbox.com, create an account, click Make a Widget button, select Flash and specify your file URL (swf file must be uploaded to the Web). After editing and publishing your widget, you'll be able to add it to Blogger automatically or copy its html code and paste it as I described in the first paragraph. Also, you can try the following code. Replace the red text with your values (and remove 'SAMPLE' marks) and insert this code into HTML/Javascript Gadget as described above. <'SAMPLE'object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0" width="your value" height="your value"> <'SAMPLE'param value="http://yourwebsite/your_flash_file.swf" name="movie"/> <'SAMPLE'param value="high" name="quality"/> <'SAMPLE'embed pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src=" http://yourwebsite/your_flash_file.swf " width="your value" height="your value" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> <'SAMPLE'/embed><'SAMPLE'/object> That's it. You've embedded Flash content into Blogger sidebar.
Links and news I want to share with you this month:
1. Photo! Presentation Widget - "an online service allowing you to create beautiful 3D albums or flash-based slideshows with your photos or photos from the web. A tremendous feature is that created photo widgets are embeddable on websites, blogs, and social networks with just one mouse click. Currently, the service can extract photos from Flickr™ photo service and also allows adding any image by its URL or from your computer".
2. Flash Earth - not new, but still lovable website. Exactly as the name says, you can explore Earth inside a single Flash-based interface. Imagery is taken from multiple sources including NASA, Microsoft and more.
3. Autodesk Project Dragonfly - " experiment in real time with your ideas in 2D and 3D before making it real!". A free online floor planning tool for virtual home designing.
4. Free Flash Logos - various background images, font choices, and color choices to make your free flash logo.
5. Flash Tips and Techniques Tutorials - nice selection of Flash tutorials. "Learn how to work in 3D, drawing techniques, text effects, tips and tricks, ActionScript, and more! "
Stay tuned!
In one of my previous posts, I offered you a poll about How and what for do you use Flash. Thank you very much for your votes and comment – votes are still coming but I think it's time to publish the final results. There are not much statistics about how people use Flash in the Web. Nevertheless, I've coped to found some sources with such data and I'll compare my results with the other surveys results.
As you can see, the leader in both columns is website design and development – yes, flash websites become more and more popular now. The second place is for fun/amusement – I presume that the figures would be larger if the surveys were carried out not by resources for people interested in Flash. In this case, using flash for fun may take the first place. The next are creation of Flash animation and application development. And the last places are shared by "I don't use Flash" and "I don't actually know what Flash is". Again, I believe that these figures can be larger on other resources. Thanks everyone who took part in my survey. Stay tuned for the next interesting findings!
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The most interesting Flash things I've met this month:
1. Exposing Flash Application Vulnerabilities with SWFScan - "HP SWFScan is a free Windows-based security tool to help developers find and fix security vulnerabilities in applications developed with the Adobe Flash Platform".
2. Actionscript 3.0 Client for the Facebook Platform API - "the new ActionScript 3.0 Client Library for Facebook Platform API, fully supported by Facebook and Adobe, makes it easy to build applications that combine the strengths of the Flash Platform and Facebook Platform".
3. New video tutorial on using SWFAddress - "a new tutorial that shows you how to enable direct and deep linking using the SWFAddress library. Deep linking is just another name for making the back button work".
4. Google Analytics + Flash = Easy Peasy… - "quick simple code for implementing Google Analytics system into flash projects. Using their ga.js code."
5. Free Flash Intros - nice collection of absolutely free downloadable Flash intros. Each Flash intro comes with a simple text file in which you type your own text and URLs to customize intros.
Enjoy!
If you visit my blog, I presume you're interested in Flash :) How and what for do you use Flash? Please answer my poll and we'll discuss the collected statistics in one of the next posts. Thanks for your answers! Your comments with more detailed answers are appreciated too :)
Beginning with this post, I will give you links to the most interesting flash places and news in the end of every month. The reason to collect such links was simple – unfortunately, there is no time to write about everything interesting in details. So, here are the most interesting things I found this month. 1. #tweetcoding Contest: Win With 140 Characters of AS3 http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/tweetcoding_con.html 2. The Russians are Coming: New Wave Flash Animation Via Moscow http://www.webupon.com/Web-Talk/The-Russians-are-Coming-New-Wave-Flash-Animation-Via-Moscow.533685 3. Flaphone™ - calls from Flash to Skype 4. Wonderfl – build Flash online 5. Some useful flash tutorials http://www.flash-game-design.com/tutorials.html 6. De MonsterDebugger - an open source debugger for Adobe Flash, Flex and AIR. http://www.monsterdebugger.com/ 7. Loading XML data using AS3 http://flashspeaksactionscript.com/loading-xml-data-using-as3/ Please share your interesting findings with me in comments!
This is a guest post by Miss Techie, a great tech blogger and a good friend of mine. Hope, you'll enjoy it!
When reviewing software, the most difficult is not to pin a label on something and remember that there is no good or bad software, there is software for different needs. So, today I want to list 5 different Flash Slideshow creators. Each of them is the best – for different purpose.
1) Easy inserting into other SWF files or Power Point presentations - FlashSlider
2) Easy embedding into website, MySpace, blog etc. – Photo Flash Maker + Go2Album
3) 3D Flash effects – 3D Flash Slideshow Creator
4) Built in photo editing – SWiSH Pix
5) Cute templates and cliparts – InAlbum Deluxe
That's my top 5 Flash slideshow creators. Now it's your turn to choose.
Lee Brimelow has made a great New Year present for Flash community - the first issue of Flasher Magazine is available for watching online, downloading and subscribing via RSS or iTunes. It's a video magazine concentrated on Flash platform and Flash development. The premiere issue offers interview with Chuck Freedman, discussion of Flash Catalyst with Ryan Stewart from Adobe, trip through the southwest and featured FAQs regarding making tutorials. Thanks Lee for great job. We're looking forward to issue #2!
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.
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 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
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. Flash 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.
Hi, everybody. Thank you for a visit, I hope you'll find interesting information and helpful tips here. So, my blog is about Flash, Flash tools, Flash technology and development of flash websites. That's the things I'm very interested in. And if you're interested in Flash too, you're welcome to be my reader, commenter, adviser, or even critic. Welcome to Flash'y'mania!
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