Just some quick information on something I found today. When loading multiple SWFs into a main SWF there are some important issues to consider, especially with library assets. ( Read More »)
Just some quick information on something I found today. When loading multiple SWFs into a main SWF there are some important issues to consider, especially with library assets. ( Read More »)
I have recently been working on a Logo creating application. We will be releasing it this month, until then I cannot post a link. Part of the task was to move some items around on the stage and then take a ‘photo’ of them, photo being a bitmap. In the application itself this process was very in depth and went well beyond what I will discuss in this tutorial. This tutorial is merely a sample of how to move multiple MovieClips around on inside a container, and then shoot a bitmap of them. ( Read More »)
I have been reading on Google’s Webmaster’s Blog. It was very interesting to see these 3 ‘no-nos’ of building a Google friendly Flash website. ( Read More »)
One of my favorite websites, Nike Skateboarding, has a great navigation system. The floating menu has been around for a long time, in both flash and javascript. It is nothing new. But the thing that really grabbed me was the rollovers. A very simple drop shadow used so effectively. Very nice work.
After seeing this, I felt the need to recreate it on my own. We have been getting into Flash 9 and Action Script 3.0 over at
nothingGrinder so I thought it would be appropriate to do this tutorial in AS3!
**NOTICE** Recently I have discovered a much better way to manage the buttons than I have listed here. I will be updating this tutorial to match my current knowledge of ActionScript 3.0. Please check back for updates, I assure you it will be worthwhile. Thanks.
Have been working on a new project for a Japanese client.
We are building a system to create and edit personal and professional logos. The tricky part of this application is the fonts. Usually , in English, a font weighs anywhere from 10k to 60k. In Japanese you are looking at about 3mb to 9mb per font. This creates some major loading issues in the application.
Here is a page dedicated to Flash Runtime Font Sharing.
Amazon has a robust API and many Web Services which are open to the public. This means developers can take advantage of Amazon services directly from their own applications.
The AMS service is for Merchants who want to connect with Amazon’s main database and utilize the affiliate services. Merchants can add Amazon products directly on their own webSite and take a commission off the sales of those products.
Amazon also has services to connect to other products they offer such as their payment services, which are similar to PayPal in their integration. Also, some storage services and web statistics computing services. Along with the rest of their arsenal. All of these services are available via a standard merchant account.
They also have a service called AIMS. AIMS is their open API for their inventory and repricing data. Only merchants with a professional account can access this API. It uses something like XMLRPC or SOAP to manage calls to and from the Amazon server. This is close to getting real time inventory updates. This means a developer can utilize this API to create inventory updates from their own Database or webSite.
This is a great way to do E-Commerce SEO. Get your products listed on Amazon but maintain the inventory directly from your own webSite!
I’ve recently been working on a new Flash project. As always I’m using AMFPHP and Flash NetConnection to access the database and some backend services. Flash remoting, for me and many others, has always been a very robust solution to dealing with external data retrieval in Flash. From the moment I read about it, I became a dedicated fan. After implementing all my data-driven media-based sites with it, I have no complaints. It rocks! The newest version AMFPHP 1.9 beta, is faster and better, from an OOP perspective. You now have strict data typing between flash and the backend, and the backend can be set up to handle non-flash instances sent from flash…. basically, you can instantiate an Object directly from Flash! amazing! ( Read More »)
Flash is a difficult tool to use when trying to create an accessible website. Accessibility reqiures careful attention to the way content relates to everything else in the webSite. Content is not available to the web browser via Flash. The content in the Flash movie is usually encapsulated and closed to the world of SEO. This has been a long standing problem with Flash and this is also the reason Flash was left out of the Web 2.0 craze. Web 2.0 has focused solely on AJAX mixed with HTML and CSS along with a few others. The only attention that Flash received was that for its powerful delivery of video over the web. This has become its name stake in the Web 2.0 world. Now Flash owns 70% of all video shown on the web. Pretty impressive. But, there is a new wave of Flash on the way! Flash content made available to the search engines. Using the power of plug-ins like SWFObject and SWFAddress along with the amazing power and speed of AMFPHP Flash can deliver accessible content to the search engines while giving the user an amazing experience.