FlashGuru Blog

How cool is this? An online slideshow builder application made with Flash and PHP. It outputs a Flash slideshow and you can do it all online. Upload photos, drag them onto the timeline in the desidered sequence, add pan, zoom and other efffects and then save it. People can then publically view your slideshows and leave comments on them. The user interface is nothing short of excellent, the design is nice and colourful and the buttons and text is nice and large for all the use and see. A superb example of building applications with Flash.

Im sure everybody is kind of sick of hearing the very public thank you’s to Macromedia, for sending them the goodies, but i am going to join the list of people anways. So thanks Mike and Co. for sending me the gear, much appreciated.

While i am on this topic i would just like to say that i thought it was very uncool of people to winge and moan very publically about having to pay FedEx for the delivery of their gifts. Email is a wonderful technology, use it!

It wouldnt suprise me if Macromedia decided not to bother sending prominent community members free gifts in the future simply because of a few peoples rude outbursts. Lets hope you didnt ruin it for everybody.

I will be in Sydney again early next year for MXDU 2005, i will be presenting a new session on Effective Flash Navigation Systems. As you may have heard me saying in the past, i highly recommend this conference, so get yourself over there, its going to be great.

Some of the latest additions to my bookmarks. Check out the portfolio of Erik Otten, amazing! Also take a peek at the special effects on this beast of a website for Advertising Visual. There is talent in Brazil, checkout the work of Vitor Vilela, top stuff. And finally, the very simple, yet effective Drew Media, love this site.

Nothing too exciting, but quite useful. Recently i got really sick of creating the same old preloader, over and over again and so i finally got around to making a Flash Movie, which contains a smooth preloader bar. You can pass the name of a movie into the preloader movie using the object/embed tags and it will preload it. You can also resize the preloader movie in the object/embed tags of the containing html page and the preloader bar will center itself inside the movie. Now as i said this is a smooth preloader bar, which means it resizes using intertia, as opposed to simply jumping to its new size, which is a funky little effect. The other good thing, is that the preloader movie itself, is actually less than 1k in size.

Remember, if you use this preloader movie, that the movie you are loading should not contain any actionscript that references root (absolute references), this is bad practice anyway, you should always right code with relative references. The source is here, so you can change the graphics.

Embed this preloader in your HTML page using the following XHTML compliant object/embed markup (AKA Flash Satay):

<object type='application/x-shockwave-flash' data='generic%20preloader.swf?movie=yourFlashMovie.swf' width='400' height='300'>
    <param name='movie' value='generic%20preloader.swf?movie=yourFlashMovie.swf' />
</object>

Modify the items in bold above to reflect the state of the movie you want to load.

The concept: Seperate common Actionscript 2 classes into seperate .swf’s and load them in when they are needed creating shared classes. The tool that automates this process and reduces your filesize in the process: Ariaware’s Optimizer. Ive been running some tests with it on some of of the applications ive created in the past that utilise more than one Flash Movie and use the Version 2 Components and have seen dramatic filesizse reduction (36%). You can download a 30 day trial version here and give it a go for yourself. Youll be impressed!

Now Wash Your Hands a London base new media agency, with an impressive client list, are seeking a Flash Developer to work on-site in their Soho offices. The Successful candidate will have 3 years experience in a similar role and possess the following skills:

• In depth knowledge of Flash Actionscript 1
• Object orientated code
• Server Interaction via XML
• Game programming
• Code driven animation

More information on this position can be found here, send your resumes here.

If you are in the California area or are from surrounding areas including Canada and are willing to move into southern California then this might be the opportunity you have been looking for. Juxt Interactive are seeking an experienced Flash Developer to work on-site, full-time. For more information, checkout the position run down here.

Fantasy Interactive, the creative know how behind the Road Runner portal have been busy working on some site enchancements for Ford. Checkout the new site which now features fully dynamic Flash Applications such as the Car Showroom and the Vehicle Information System. You will also find a new global navigation system. Another great example of how Flash can integrate into a large website and provide extra value to the visitors.

Media Elements 2004, a 2 day Flash Conference which will take place on the 11th November in Enschede, East Holland and it promises to be a great event, with speakers such as Waldo Smeets, Craig Swann, Samuel Wan and Keith Peters. I will also be presenting a session on the JSAPI. Hope to see you there!

Jetix (Formerly Fox Kids) are currently seeking a Flash Games Developer for a full-time position in their London based offices. The overal purpose of this position is to help establish and develop creative fun solutions (predominately games based) for JETIX Online and interactive services and continuously generate and drive new interactive concepts in order to create and maintain the most compelling kids offer on the Web and TV in Europe. Sounds like an exciting opportunity with an exciting company. Interested? Send your resumes to the Head of Design (Jason Robinson).