Flash'y'Mania

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 blogging – podcasting 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.

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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

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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!

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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

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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.

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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:

Creating Flash sound player;
Uploading SWF player to the Web;
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.

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):

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.

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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. 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.

I ncrediFlash 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.