FlashGuru Blog

Since Macromedia Flash 5, it has been possible to view your flash movie stream into the player, at different bit-rates, using the Show Streaming Option in the Flash Authoring Player, found in the View menu.This makes it possible to see what your website viewers will see when they visit your website on their varying sized bandwidth pipes, 14k, 28k, 56k etc….. obviously it isnt exactly accurate, because your website viewers connection speeds will fluctuate, but it will give you a good idea. In Flash MX, you can now export your flash movies compressed, using GZLib compression, which further reduces the filesize of .swf files which contain lots of text and actionscript. Unfortuneatley the Show Streaming option doesnt cater for this further filesize reduction, therefore it is now even less accurate!

You gotta love the transition between the different sections on this lovely designed website for Hull Film, havent seen this done before, very original, very creative. Is this animation or is it a sequence of images, dunno for sure, but its effective.

An up to date listing of all of the Flash MX related books currently available on the market can be found over at actionscripts.org, check out this webpage if you are looking to further your flash skills with the aid of a book.

Matthew David, author of Flash MX Magic, has written an article for Ultrashock which outlines the main new features which have been added to Flash MX and the effect these additions will have on Graphic Designers, Developers and Rich Media Designers, aswell as giving us his own take on what isnt in Flash MX, that should be. A great read even if you are already aware of all the new features, which most of us are.

Alot of mouses now available on the market have a scroll wheel, mine included, the Microsoft Intellimouse, unfortuneatley there is no support for the scroll wheel in Flash MX, but with the use of a little javascript you can inform your flash movies, when the scroll wheel is being used, once your flash movie has been alerted that the scroll wheel has been used, much like an event, you can then do whatever you like with that nofitication, scroll a textfield, move a movieclip or turn the volume of your background music up & down. Chanm7 webmaster of The 1st Movement and a Were-Here member, reveals all on the Were-Here forums, complete with an example and downloadable source. You can also see a live example of this technique in action, scrolling multiple textfields at this flash blog reader also courtesy of The 1st Movement.

The 60 Flash Film Festival Finalists have very recently been decided and made public, now is your chance to vote for your favourite sites in all of the 15 different categories, head on over there now and cast your votes. If you cant be arsed to vote, then use this webpage as a starting point for some cool site checking.

Klas Kroon webmaster of the ever popular flash experiments repositry entitled Jailbitch decided to pack up his job and leave the web behind quite some-time ago. Recently his name has re-appeared on the web in the form of a new website which focuses on tutorials about creating tile-based games, a topic which Klas is very familiar with. Outside of Society contains alot of online experiments, some of which weve seen before, some which we havent, if you havent got much to do or are interested in finding out more about creating tile based games in flash then hurry up and click this link.

There are plenty of Flash related forums on the internet at this very moment, but all of them offer something different, a different environment, a different style, a different user-base, another flash community resource site has joined the ranks recently, the Flashdevils community. A collection of some of the best flash developers on the web, there to help you learn new things and overcome those nagging problems. Check it out, sign up for the forums, join in and maybe even help a few people out yourself!

Mike Chambers has collated a definitive list of Component related articles and tutorials on his blog, for all those people who want to learn more about this new feature in Flash MX, so if you have heard about them, but have been too scared to go any further with them, then now would be a good time to get reading and get creating.

Flash MX limited what you could do with the local operating system with the implementation of the new security sandbox. LPFlashEx is an actionscript library that brings together 19 of the most commonly used local functions, such as exploring local directories, copying files and creating directories. The actionscript works in both Flash MX and Flash 5 projector files and .swf files that run locally on the users machine. If you regularly create local applications, screensavers or interactive presentations then download this free .as file, and if you need help read some of the tutorials and checkout some of the online samples available for download.

Anybody that develops content for the internet, whether a designer or programmer must have had some form of contact with the Macromedia Product Line, the latest and greatest Macromedia product releases now have their very own magazine, the MXInsite magazine. The magazine contains alot of articles, tutorials and interviews related to the Macromedia MX Studio product line, Fireworks MX, Flash MX, Dreamweaver MX and Coldfusion MX, so if you use one of these applications, then why not get some interesting reading delivered to your door by subscribing to the very first paper based Un-Official Macromedia magazine.

Three new flash players have been ported onto wireless devices, this time around we are talking mobile phones, Nokia mobile phones, the latest Nokia Communicator series of mobile phones can now play .swf files, if you download the player for your device. Its great fun developing wireless content, especially on such a small screen, with tiny processors and limited memory, call it a challenge, youll learn alot of optimization and usability techniques while your at it, get developing content for the Nokia 9210, Nokia 9210i and the Nokia 9290 today.

Flash Saver Maker allows you to make screensavers from your favorite Macromedia Flash movies. You can make flash screensavers direct from your Flash .SWF files, or from your Flash executables. It is even possible to select multiple Flash files in one time, Flash Saver Maker plays them one by one, and then loops movies! If you like , you can turn all sound coming from flash files off, and add mp3,midi or wav sound files as your own background sounds…
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