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Archive for the ‘Flash’ Category

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Thinking Outside of the Flash Embed Box

Posted on 30 April, 2006 at 9:54pm with 14 comments

As a Flash Developer, I get very strange looks when I suggest to clients and co-workers not to use Flash as a solution for particular pieces of a project. While I am an advocate for Flash, I also encourage the implementation of Flash in appropriate situations. AJAX is not just a buzz word. It is a very viable method for solving problems that otherwise would have been done in Flash. We should not have to see another basic Flash slideshow using XML to fade images in and out. There are plenty of AJAX slideshows that can perform just as well as Flash (sans high-end motion features).

With the Flash / JavaScript Integration Kit, the doors were opened to allow Flash and Javascript to communicate with each other. While there are some very impressive examples of using Flash and Javascript together, very little seems to have been done with this new method of Flash development. This surprises me greatly as it has completely changed how I approach developing Flash applications.
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Flash in HTTPS

Posted on 20 August, 2005 at 11:18am with 2 comments

This is probably a rare issue for most people, but one of my co-workers ran into a security warning when using embedded Flash in secure pages.

After a little Googling, I found out why the problem occurs and how to fix it. In case you’re too lazy, here’s the solution below:


<object classid="clsid:A67CDB6E-AE7D-11cf-96B8-344554540010" codebase="https://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/
swflash.cab #version=6,0,29,0" width="700" height="300">
      <param name="movie" value="FOO/FOO.swf">
      <param name="quality" value="high">

      <PARAM NAME=wmode VALUE=opaque>
      <embed src="FOO/FOO.swf"
quality="high" wmode=opaque pluginspage="
www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer "
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="700"
height="300"></embed>
</object>

Thanks Mind-Probe

Flash XML Caching Solution

Posted on 20 August, 2005 at 11:17am with 9 comments

I have found quite a few people run into this problem from time to time and there’s actually quite an easy solution to take care of such an issue:


xml.load("xmlFile.xml?"+Math.random());

Essentially, Flash will think that the file is a different URL each time it loads the file and the psuedo parameter (‘?+Math.random()’) will be ignored for the file request. Clever and effective.

What have you done lately?

Posted on 18 April, 2005 at 12:22am with 2 comments

Well, this is my latest little experiment in Flash. It’s a day logger to visually show what you’ve done in a day and how many hours you did it. I’m calling it What Have You Done at this point but I’m trying to think of a better name. The colors are still in a work-in-progress and eventually there will be a whole set of colors to associate activity with stress level. This little graph is not the most accurate in terms of what I’ve done today and especially not accurate in terms of stress levels since the time with the fiance was the highlight of the week (hence, no stress).

As you can guess, the thing runs on an XML backend which will have an associated authoring tool for generating the XML. Tools such as a weekly/monthly view of all logged days would be really nice and relatively easy. I think this is a really cool way to document you day as a whole.

As always, feedback is rad. :)

Better functionality for the Flash slideshow

Posted on 10 April, 2005 at 11:11am with no comments

For simplicity’s sake, I set up the method of preloading all images at once before the slideshow begins. This is seeming more and more ridiculous and I’m seeing a lot of inefficiency in it.

Since people are most likely going to take time to look at individual images, the time where the user is viewing an individual image should be taken advantage of by beginning the preloading of the next (and possibly previous?) image during the viewing process. Waiting to preload the next image until someone actually wants to see it seems stupid if in fact there was time to do it before.

I really don’t see much difficulty doing this either and I’m going to start working on it this week by Friday at the latest. I think this feature will make the slideshow much improved. More later.

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