FlashGuru Blog

Darshan Sawardekar has created a very unique and useful set of 3 components which work together, to allow you to preview style changes made to any component in the flash mx authoring tool using live preview. The LocalStyleManagers flash extension consists of 3 separate components that work together towards a common goal of providing skinning functionality to the Flash UI Components in the Flash MX IDE itself, in real time as well as runtime. This article will explain how to use these components and you can download the component set as a Macromedia Exstension, here.

Googlism for: www.flashguru.co.uk - “www.flashguru.co.uk is where many flash developers start their day”. Pretty neat eh! Whats Your Googlism?

Kristin also known as GalaxyGoo on the various Flash Forums has her own blog, you will find alot of Flash Math related information over there, so if you know your sine from your cosine then this is the place to find your reading material on a daily basis.

Marcos Weskamp has developed a component im sure that alot of people will make use of, a ZoomPane Component. It is currently in the beta stage and so Marcos has requested you let him know if you find any bugs or have any ideas/comments on the component. You can download the component as is here and you can download the sourcefiles for the sample, here.
[Via FlashBlog]

If you have GetRight installed on your computer, a download management utility and you view a Flash movie that attempts to load an mp3 sound file into the flash player dynamically using the Sound.loadSound method, GetRight stops the loading of the mp3 file and asks you to choose a location to save the mp3 file on your local computer, whether you choose to download the file or not, flash still doesnt load the file into the player, which raises an issue. GetRight is one of the most, if not the most popular downloand utility and this is the default behaviour of the program, of course these settings can be changed, by removing the hook for mp3 files but Flash alone cannot do this automatically for you, this is a manual process that viewers of your site will have follow if they want to listen to dynamically loaded sounds on your site.

To fix the problem, i assume that by changing the file exstension of your mp3 files to something which isnt registered as a download hook in GetRight will do the trick, but of course, if GetRight actually checks the mime-type of the file instead of using the files exstension, then this will not solve the problem. Changing the mime-type is not only a complex process for novices, it wont solve the problem, because the Flash Player will not play the file if its mime-type is not set to type mp3.

SWFTools is an online categorised directory that collates most, if not all, the swf related applications available on the market today, complete with descriptions, a download mirror and the ability to be notified when a new version of the application is released. A very handy site worth bookmarking and of course, if you are the developer of an application you want listed on the site then do let the webmaster know.

Hey peeps, the past two weeks ive been awfully busy and last week i was very ill, so ill - i didnt want to touch a computer:D Im back now, things are in full swing as of now. Expect to see a new site design and new functionality in the very near future!

Macromedia have updated their FlashComm Component set with some bug fixes and the addition of two new components:

• VideoPlayback

The VideoPlayback component lets you control the playback of a buffered audio-video stream. You can pause or play the stream, jump to any position by dragging the playhead, and adjust the audio level setting.

• VideoRecord

The VideoRecord component records a buffered stream to the server. The camera and microphone output is recorded.

You can get them here.

Greg Burch a Macromedian has written two articles for Ultrashock. The first contains everything you need to know about Local Shared Objects and the second is a rundown on the FlashVars parameter, that allows you to pass variables into a Flash movie. Check them out, they are both good reading material.