Friends of ED has been releasing competently compiled web design books made with collaboration from some of the best for quite a few years now and when they offered a few books to the Flash Insider team to read I jumped at the chance. The first book I cracked open was the latest in their Essentials series, Flash 8 Essentials. The Essentials books are meant to grab current and future web designers and give them a quick dip into the latest web design software. This book was written a quick guide to Flash 8 and includes enough tutorial and code to get most designers and developers up to speed. The writing style of this book is similar to a motivational seminar on Flash. This helps the reader become extremely excited about the new version and can make you feel like you can do everything in the book.
Flash 8 Essentials has six authors, but the reader will not notice a definite change from one chapter to the next. Each author has already made a name for himself in the Flash design and development world. Two of the authors have already written a few books on this subject and one helped to create the current Developer Certification Exam.
One of the most common post topics on the Adobe Flash User Forums is a request for tutorial recommendations. Well, here ya go! Great tutorials and it FREE!
IFBIN.com just opened their service to the public for free. It is a client that you need to download and install that allows you to browse and download the Flash By Example and Flex By Example code/tutorial libraries. Great stuff!
The current IFBIN.com site is a little sketchy on the details, but the FREE message is loud and clear. You can read Darron Schall's (one of the contributors) description of the service here.
IFBIN is the brainchild of Adobe Flex Evangelist Ted Patrick. Originally, a subscription service, the move to a FREE model is a little confusing, but it's certainly not time to look a gift horse in the mouth!
Geek Cocktail Party Bonus: What's better than throwing around alphabet-soup acronyms? Knowing what the mean. Check here to lean what IFBIN really stands for!
The creators of the Canadian show Odd Job Jack will release all master flash files, bitmaps, art, props etc. of each episode every week. Also included will be tutorials and documentation so you can hack or remix to your hearts content via a Creative Commons license. Check for a new set every Monday via bittorrent. If you do anything with these files, post it in our comment section. Happy animating!
Have you ever wanted to know how you can create your own video hosting site allowing users to upload video, automatically convert it to FLV, and display it for the world to see? A recent post at Daniel's Random Mutterings (DRM - how clever) explains exactly how to do this with open source tools. Using a Djano CMS system, FFMpeg for the FLV encoding, FLVtools2 for writing meta information, and FlowPlayer for embedding the SWF file you'll have everything you need to get started. The code is pretty straight forward and a great starting point. Now go forth and create your new video distribution empire.
Adobe is sponsoring a Developer Week (12-16 June). This is a free series of online presos aimed at developers. Lots of Flex stuff, an overview of the Adobe Engagement Platform, and AS 3.0 for Flash developers (in case you haven't started exploring AS3 in Flex). If you haven't had a chance to play around with Flex, this would be a good place to get an introduction so you know what's coming on deck.
Looks like there's some good information to be had here...and its FREE! So go sign up today.
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.
Check out Kinglong's Gradient Explorer! (The link is directly
to the SWF file. If you'd can read Chinese or want to use Babelfish on Kinglong's post about the project, go here.) It's a great way to experience how code works in
real time. See how and where the little numbers change the way things look instead of just playing around with
sliders...and you can always cut and paste the code into your own Flash movies too!
InformIT put up a sound tutorial earlier this month that shows how to create a control a couple of sound buttons that
mute and unmute audio that is playing from your library. The tutorial is meant as a starting point for new Flash users
who want to integrate sound into their projects and want to give their users a little needed control of the audio. New
Flashers can extend this tutorial by flipping to the Livedocs at Adobe's site and looking over the Sound object. You can take a user's experience to
a whole new level with audio manipulation via balance, fade, volume and even dynamic control. I recommend even browsing
the Microphone object to look into ways to
create a visual experience that feeds on sounds fed into the user's computer (much like many of us are doing with the
Camera object for video controls).
NewsForge wrote up a quite PHP tutorial for displaying charts using the PHP/SWF Chart package from Maani. They take a few W3Schools stats and
generate some easy to use PHP code for quick insertion and even quicker modification for your site. The charting
package they use is an alternative to Flex for interactive chart creation and is a good package for individual sites
that may want to avoid a lot of code, but I think developers benefit from the use of these kind of packages to get
started if they plan on a stop gap solution only. These packages are good for an easy site throw up, but Flash
developers and even some regular coders should really take a long hard look into Flex before building a site around
this solution. If you don't want to learn Flex or ActionScript then stick with this solution otherwise take the chance
and jump into Flex.
Clive
Whitear over at Adobe Consulting's Work in Progress
blog just posted a really nice Transition and Tween Explorer. Not the prettiest app you'll ever see, but really
functional. Great way to learn some Actionscripting as well if you're new to the whole coding aspect of things. Have
fun playing with the effects, then cut and paste the code into your own files! Download the files
here!
Adobe should build this into future Flash UIs, similar to the filter explorer in Photoshop.
We usually concerned with Flash as a means of
creating interactive, multimedia pieces for use on a personal computer, but Chris Georgenes reminds us that Flash can
be used for a lot more. Check out his article, "Migrating Flash Projects to
Video" on the Flash Dev Center site. He
has some great tips on taking your Flash movies to DVD and broadcast TV. I especially like the nod to Flashants' SWF2Video. A couple of years ago, I
had to reanimate pieces in AfterEffects for DVD menu backgrounds that I'd mocked up using coded animation in Flash
because I couldn't figure out how to output the dynamic Flash movie to video. More recently, I've seen GeoVid's Flash to Video Encoder at work and
been pleased with it, but I'm definitely going to check out SWF2Video now too!
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!
In case you're like me and stuck no where near
Seattle this week, but wish you could learn more about integration from Photoshop and Flash, Jack Nack has a few good links for your. Jack's
buddy Michael Ninness compiled a set of tutorials and even gave a talk at FlashForward this week about the best ways to
combine our two favorite pursuits. I only wonder if this means animated cartoons showing off the perfectly toned body
attached to someone else's head... Back to the subject at hand though. Start your tutorials with one describing how to
adjust
your beloved Photoshop away from its print/camera roots and closer to your web needs. Then check out the rest at
the link.
Looking for some Flex to fill out your Friday night? About a month ago (yes I know I'm behind, but I'm trying to
catch up) Mike Potter of Adobe post a quick Flex and PHP write up and included the code for a simple app to update a
SQL database via PHP from Flex 2.0. Check it out for yourself, but make sure you edit for functionality. One of his
commenters notes that the code's simplicity leaves open a security hole via SQL query injection.
Our big blog brother, Engadget posted a great
tutorial this morning showing you exactly how to run Flash (and therefore Flash-based-games) on you very own X-Box 360.
Head on over for the full tutorial. Unfortunately the Dashboard upgrade released today by Microsoft will break this
hack, but if you want to wait on the update try it out. I wonder if you could use this for basic FLV files too? If so,
this would be a cool way to stream Google video (via the online player, not the purchased kind) or YouTube video to
your X-Box 360 for HD viewing. Enjoy.
Friends of ED has been releasing competently compiled web design books made with collaboration from some of the best for quite a few years now and when they offered a few books to the Flash Insider team to read I jumped at the chance. The first book I cracked open was the latest in their Essentials series, Flash 8 Essentials. The Essentials books are meant to grab current and future web designers and give them a quick dip into the latest web design software. This book was written a quick guide to Flash 8 and includes enough tutorial and code to get most designers and developers up to speed. The writing style of this book is similar to a motivational seminar on Flash. This helps the reader become extremely excited about the new version and can make you feel like you can do everything in the book. 
InformIT put up a sound tutorial earlier this month that shows how to create a control a couple of sound buttons that
mute and unmute audio that is playing from your library. The tutorial is meant as a starting point for new Flash users
who want to integrate sound into their projects and want to give their users a little needed control of the audio. New
Flashers can extend this tutorial by flipping to the 
NewsForge wrote up a quite PHP tutorial for displaying charts using the 
We usually concerned with Flash as a means of
creating interactive, multimedia pieces for use on a personal computer, but Chris Georgenes reminds us that Flash can
be used for a lot more. Check out his article, "
In case you're like me and stuck no where near
Seattle this week, but wish you could learn more about integration from Photoshop and Flash, 
Our big blog brother, Engadget posted a great
tutorial this morning showing you exactly how to run Flash (and therefore Flash-based-games) on you very own X-Box 360.
Head on over for the full tutorial. Unfortunately the Dashboard upgrade released today by Microsoft will break this
hack, but if you want to wait on the update try it out. I wonder if you could use this for basic FLV files too? If so,
this would be a cool way to stream Google video (via the online player, not the purchased kind) or YouTube video to
your X-Box 360 for HD viewing. Enjoy.
