Jay Dyke over at CartoonSmart.com has posted a free video tutorial on how to use Geoff Sterns' SWFObject, a Javascript solution to the recent unpleasantness regarding Flash running in IE 6 on Windows. If you're a real visual learner and you need to see how it all works, this is the place for you. Jay rambles a bit, but he gets the point across eventually. And the SWFObject is an elegant solution once you're all set up.

I'll warn you that this is a ~20MB ZIP file download. Jay is offering tutorial files as well as the Quicktime movie of the tutorial which is almost 50 MBs (somebody get that guy a copy of Captivate!), so...

You'll also note that Jay is using the older "FlashObject" which Stearns has renamed the "SWFObject" for reasons explained here.

I'm a little late on pointing this out, but its worth repeating it here again anyway.

Last week, Adobe released a couple of new templates for your Flash 8 IDE to address the latest changes in how Internet Explorer addresses active content (i.e. Flash). With the latest update, IE users have to actively allow your Flash movie to play. The Flash Active Content Update Extension will help in building new sites that avoid this problem.

If you're looking for help in adjusting existing HTML pages, check out the Active Content Developer Center. And for information on the problem from the browser side of things, check here.

Yahoo! Yippee! Etc! Yahoo has just released two new APIs for its mapping service. Web developers can use the new Yahoo Maps AJAX API and the Yahoo Maps Flash API to create their own Yahoo maps in any web-based (or just web connected) application. Now Neave will need to roll the Yahoo info into his Flash map. The API includes hooks for other live data from Yahoo sources like their trakkic tracker and more. Plus the Flash API comes in a Flex flavor for RIA developers looking to roll maps and live data into their applications. I would like to see this added to a live pizza ordering application that shows a highlighted delivery route and availability map that allows a user to click on their house and even draw out a map. Heck, while we're thinking of map drawing, let's create an interactive app that multiple users can log into at the same time and watch a leader draw a live route on the map (with notes) to give directions to a meeting (or something).

When I think of dynamic websites, I'm usually thinking about data-driven sites that have customized information. Mike Madaio over at Digital Web Magazine has started to think beyond the data to the design too. After all, not all monitors are created equal; there are lots of wacky aspect ratios hitting the market. Mike uses a really elegant combination of JavaScript and CSS to take care of the problem. Check out his tutorial here and design your site for screens of all sizes!

[via Metah's Blog]

Ken Toley from Flash Technical Support has corralled a lot of good links and a few tips of his own on making Flash content accessible. Something we should all be aware of and practice. And not just because federal development jobs mandate it. It's an enlightening experience to "view" your sites (Flash-based an otherwise) using a screen reader or a zooming tool. After all, the goal is to have the most folks possible experience your work, so do everything you can to make that possible!

Yes that's right, yet another reason for Mac users (that's me too) to celebrate. Macromedia has added tabbed open files to Flash 8 and Dreamweaver 8. Finally Apple users can get the same experience in these great design tools that PC users have had since MX. Sure we lose a little screen real estate, but we gain quick file flipping. Thank goodness, I've been tired of Apple + ` (thats apple and accent not apple and apostrophe) for quite a while.

via Scott Fegette

Ryan Hornbeck has written a short Google search sourced article on why some people (not us of course) can’t stand Flash and avoid it like the plague. I found it interesting that Flash is seen by some as the source of their headaches, when the real problem is bad design. Sure you can create a full Flash site that annoys all your users, but I can create a full AJAX or CSS or whatever site that also annoys all of my users, yet there aren’t too many out there looking to stop using the web (for now, just wait for 2.0). Like Hornbeck, I agree with Keith Robinson that the issue here is with the designers and developers. We see Flash as a way to expand our horizons and some of us put thing on the web that can only be classified as art. Unfortunately there are others who jump face first into bad design and throw up on their sites (causing their users to do the same). In the end I also agree with John Dowdell’s conclusion that best practices need to be developed and followed in order to create good sites in Flash. The release of Flash Basic may help push these standards on the new generation of designers, hopefully some of the rest of us can pick it up too. Whay do you think?

via John Dowdell; image from the Tombstone Generator

sIFR is web-element that uses JavaScript and Flash to create rich text for the web that is dynamically created based on the offsetHeight and offsetWidth of the text elements. Since it uses CSS to find the text to replace, sIFR is able to meet W3C standards by being suppressible via stripped style sheet. The web-element uses Javascript to discover if the browser can run Flash and then to hide and replace all identified for change text. A small SWF is created with the text to be replaced and then sized to the exact height and width of text element to be changed. The latest version creates the Flash text at a small font size and then scales it up to a size to fit the element. The key thing to remember when you use this is the big what if the user doesn’t have Flash. According to Mike Davidson (who created sIFR with Mark Wubben), You need to try to make you text look similar to the Flash via your CSS. Basically don’t leave your section headers as regular sized text to be replaced with huge titles. The non-Flash browser will destroy the look of the site in this case. Also this is accessible because the Flash is only replacing text in the same way a style sheet could replace text elements with images. So a screen reader should just see the page in the normal way, but a regular user will see the Flashiness. The developers of this technology have really thought about their users. They worked with the Firefox Flashblock developers to make the Flash not show up for Flashblock users. sIFR even has a best practices recommendation. The gist? Don’t use this to replace all text, just section headers. Also designers should be wary of using this to create links because Flash takes away some browser functionality when used for hyperlinking.

sIFR if free to head over to the link below to download and check it out. The zip comes with an FLA that you can open and edit to add you own fonts and make changes.

The Studio 8 upgrade has updated Fireworks to it's eighth version. Fireworks 8 includes 25 new blend modes that allow designers to create Photoshop-like alterations of images and objects in their graphics. There is a new Add Shadow command that will add shadows and faux 3d effects to logos and vector graphics. These shadows are even kept when you move the graphic to Flash 8. The Fireworks batch conversion tool has been updated to include more options, a status bar and a log file. Designers can import more formats including the newly popular JPEG2000, MacPaint, SGI, and QuickTime formats. Developers can use Fireworks 8 to export popup menus created with CSS code instead of JavaScript (like previous versions).

I wonder if these improvements are going to make Fireworks a sub-Photoshop after the merger. Maybe a Photoshop Elements from designers instead of photographers. Also, I like the closer integration with Flash through transfer of graphics and colors between the two applications. The best new feature has to be exporting Fireworks made pop-up menus for web pages as CSS. CSS will help streamline pages and bring more designers and developers into the Fireworks fold and possibly away from the much heavier Photoshop.

With the release of Studio 8, Dreamweaver gets an upgrade to Dreamweaver 8 with new functionality including: collapsable code fragments, new CSS visualization, easy XML feed drag and drop integration and new Flash video integration.

Now the code view of you webpage in Dreamweaver includes the option to collapse code fragments by tag. Plus a new code toolbar has been added to allow easy commenting, tag collapsing and code selection collapsing. The new CSS visualization gives designers a new way to edit and view CSS based pages with color coded regions and properties. Dreamweaver also includes a new CSS panel that consolidates all CSS functions into one easy to use property pane. Dreamweaver's upgrade includes easy XML drag and drop workflow that allows you to bring news feeds and basic XML into you site via the design view. Web developers can also drag and drop Flash video straight into their designs for quick integration inside web sites and applications. The upgrade also makes Dreamweaver the first web design tool to include CSS and web accessibility standards checking, which will help all developers become compliant developers.

It's great to see some of the W3C standards being enforced by this new upgrade, plus I really like the fact that Macromedia has decided to include the drag and drop XML feeds and new CSS integration. I found CSS really hard to handle in older versions, but I think this upgrade with bring more of us into the future, plus those blog designers out there won't have to hand code everything anymore.

OK, so SIGGRAPH ended on Thursday, but between travel time and time to decompress a bit, I haven't had a chance to blog about the last couple of days till now. The Web Program (which will not be a part of SIGGRAPH 2006!?!) began on Wednesday with some excellent presos. I'll try to recap some of the best in the next day or so to finish off blogging this year's conference.

First off, Peter Morville of Semantic Studios (who wrote the seminal book on web information architecture back in 1998) spoke about what he calls "ambient findability" which he describes idealistically as the ability to "find anything one or anything, anywhere and anytime."  The problem, of course, is with the proliferation of information, how to make sure that your information can be found any where, anytime. Morville has a nifty little chart (see image at right) that explains the nexus of ideas he thinks is necessary.

Morville is also interested in devices that access information on the web, but aren't necessarily desktop, browser-based systems. This includes mobile devices with browsers, but it also includes other devices which capture datastreams delivered through the web and display them in interesting ways (see AmbientDevices.com for instance).

More reading:
Findability.org
Information Architecture for the WWW, 2nd Ed.

Today was the first day of SIGGRAPH 05. Went to a panel this morning on "the eight basic steps to success" when making an animated film. Like all conference panels, some parts were more interesting than others. One thing that struck me though was a the continual assertion that age equaled sophistication. The argument was made several times that you could get away with less sophisticated product if your target audience was young children, whereas the older the audience the more sophistication they could handle.

Now, I have a few problems with this. First off, I have a six year-old and a two year-old and they both constantly surprise me with the sophistication of their analyses of thw world around them. Secondly, I've met more than a few "older" folks (meaning non-children, not octogenarian) that lack more than their share of sophistication. So the question that comes to my mind, and to me this applies to web design and development as well, when did lowest-common-denominator become the bar to shoot for?

I understand the many arguments that surround this ethos, and some have more merit than others. After all, we do want the most people possible to view and enjoy our work. But I also think that as designers and developers (or even animated filmmakers) we have the opportunity to challenge our audiences as well. This isn't an argument for obfuscation; rather, a call to sophistication. I think we would all be surprised at how well our audiences (of all ages) might rise to the occasion.

When I touched on the J.K. Rowling site for Harry Potter release day, I didn't realize her site was about to be updated to meet 508 accessibility standards.

The upgrade features screen readable menus and a fully tabable interface. All of these features can be enabled dynamically via ActionScript on your own site using the Accessibilty class. This class features two methods that can be used to check if a user has a screen reader or accessibilty program enabled. You site can then change at run-time to accommodate your users.

Read more about United States federal accessibilty guidelines here.

When visiting the J.K. Rowling site click the main site accessibility enabled button at the bottom of the page and navagate the site using you tab key for the "full" experience.
via Bob Regan

So you open a new project and need to add a scrolling text box but you’re tired of the UIScrollBar component (included in the Flash 7.2 update), what do you do? Careful even that scroll bar should follow some rules of design. Jakob Nielsen’s latest useablity column dives right into the best ways to create scroll bars and will even show you some of the worst ones he has found. He starts with five basic rules including the always broken “Avoid horizontal scrolling.” Neilsen is known for an infamous Flash Usability report he produced before Flash MX was released. After you check out his opinions tell me why you break the rules or even when a client has forced you to.