WebDev3000 » Flash

Wallaby

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:24:41 +0000

More and more say that Flash is dying. Could this be true? To be honest, I have no idea but, from my Internet user point of view, I can surely tell you that HTML5 looks like a Flash killer! These being said, Wallaby comes in at the right time, although it seems a bit strange to see it released by the company currently behind the Flash technology, Adobe…

… but Wallaby is still in a pretty early development stage, so Flash isn’t going to die that fast. Just take a look at the image above – I downloaded Wallaby’s Prerelease 1 version, installed it, grabbed some FLA file from deviantART, tried to convert it to HTML5 and I ended up with an error! On the other hand, its official page makes this very clear: “Wallaby is not a final product and is still in the testing and validation phase.”

To me, Wallaby is not a valid product yet, but I’ll surely keep an eye on it. As I write this, there’s no official roadmap available, but if you work a lot with Flash sites, be sure to bookmark this program’s home – one day, switching from Flash to HTML5 may become a matter of life and death. For now, HTML5 is more like electric cars – the technology is there, its price is decent, yet most people still keep the old stuff going. For how long… that remains to be seen, in both cases.

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ZEN

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:47:42 +0000

When I hear ZEN, all I can think of is Creative’s line of portable media players – I really love most devices bearing this name, although I will be forever addicted to my good old Sandisk Sansa e250… but I am sure you’re already wondering why am I telling you these things here, right? Well, it’s still about media playing, but also about developing a website… and it even has some ZEN in it!

For now, the ZEN we’re talking about is a more or less finished script that’s described as being “a single-song HTML5 Audio Player, powered by jPlayer, styled and mostly animated with CSS3.” Its creator says the name should remind you of “a little of a dark Zen stone lying on bright sand,” but all it reminds me of is Creative’s line of media players, as I said before. Let’s just hope they won’t come with a lawsuit for this…

… and let’s also hope that ZEN will work “more than just less” on your site – for now, it seems Firefox4, Chrome, Safari, Opera, iOS all can handle it, but not all the same way. Hey, we’re talking about a basic player with a simplified interface here, so don’t have too high hopes, all right? It’s just the fact that I really love the name and its looks, so it would be a pity for this project not to get enough attention and die in this early stage, don’t you agree?

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HTML5 Blue Video Gallery

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 18:39:12 +0000

YouTube must die! I don’t know about you, but I got tired of videos removed due to copyright violations, when such a thing is far from the truth. I wouldn’t be amazed to add a video of myself whistling some Justin Bieber song and then find it removed on copyright grounds. The only problem is that I can’t remember any song belonging to that kid, simply because I listen to music, not crap for retards. Even worse, I find that more and more videos become unavailable for my country, so why bother with it any longer? With so many HTML5 video players around, I could easily build my own YouTube clone and only allow access to my friends and family. Not a bad idea at all, if I think well…

… and that’s why I decided to tell you a few words about HTML5 Blue Video Gallery, a video player/video gallery XML-driven piece of code that uses the latest HTML5 tehniques, for example HTML5 LocalStorage to remember the last volume setting when you get back to your player. Sweet!

Depending on the browser, the list of supported formats may change – MP4 for Chrome/Safari, OGG/OGV for Firefox, WEBM for Opera and FLV/MP4/MOV for IE – through Flash Player, since there’s no HTML5 support offered by that browser yet.

Compatible with virtually all browsers, HTML5 Blue Video Gallery can be purchased for $7 – a regular license and $35 – an extended one. I guess this is it, so if you also think that YouTube must die, feel free to build a nice video streaming site and share it with the world. That’s all, folks!

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jPlayer

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:46:26 +0000

A few days ago, I discovered a brilliant game made using HTML5. This game is Z-Type, but we won’t be talking about it today. I brought it up simply to highlight the great things that can be achieved thanks to HTML5 and now we’ll get to the subject, namely jPlayer…

… a jQuery plugin that allows you to do a lot of things, such as playing and controlling media files in your webpage, create and style (using HTML+CSS, of course) a media player, but most awesome part – in my opinion – is its support for more devices, thanks to HTML5.

For now, jPlayer supports MP3, M4A (AAC) and M4V (H.264), but additional formats may be supported when using HTML5, such as OGV, OGA or WAV (when HTML5 cannot be used, the Flash fallback solution takes its place).

Requiring jQuery 1.3.2 or later, jPlayer 2.0.0 was released back in late December, 2010 and works with a wide range of browsers on various platforms, including Windows, OSX, iOS and Android (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari and IE-based browsers, where available, as well as others).

Oh! Did I mention that jPlayer is completely free? Now it seems I just did. Anyway, donations are welcomed, as it usually happens with such projects. That’s all, folks!

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H.264 XML White Video Player

Adrian — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 22:13:28 +0000

H.264 XML White Video Player is a free Flash video player. With this player you can play the following video formats: MP4, M4V, M4A, MOV, Mp4v, F4V. The configuration is stored in a XML file, this way you don’t need to change anything in HTML. You can put this player anywhere on your website by customizing the size of the video from the XML file.

H.264 XML White Video Player is very customizable. If you want set an image is the video is stopped, this video player can do it for you. You can create also image playlist for the movies, this way you can add as many movies as you want. If you want to show your movies at the best quality, you can smooth the video.

The interface for H.264 XML White Video Player is very intuitive. You can also play the videos in fullscreen and you can setup the autoplay function on.

The package of H.264 XML White Video Player includes FLA, SWF and XML files. In help.txt you will find all the XML settings and also the instructions on how to set up correctly.

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Agile Uploader

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:17:10 +0000

I love smart scripts. I really enjoy when I get to earn more time for thinking, instead of working on repetitive tasks. For example, let’s think about image uploading and resizing. No matter what I use to resize the files, this operation requires my direct intervention. Fortunately, scripts like Agile Uploader can do this by themselves!

Freely available and covered by the terms of the Creative Commons license, Agile Uploader has no special requirements, offering excellent speed and being able to resize images on the client-side, thus saving bandwidth and computing time of the server used.

Agile Uploader can handle both single and multiple files, and if the default SWF file encapsulating this script is not enough, you can also take advantage of the jQuery plugin bundled with it. As a little bonus, the plugin comes with a few visual settings, not to mention that you can use it to set options that get passed to the SWF via flashvars in the end…

Compatibility: all major browsers, at least until proven otherwise…

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HTML5 Boilerplate

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:55:50 +0000

If you are not happy with HTML5 Reset, here’s an alternative: HTML5 Boilerplate. Before moving on, let me tell you that this one’s website is clearly much better than the one HTML5 Reset has, so we’re up to a good start here. Good, but what else?

According to the official mumbo-jumbo, “HTML5 Boilerplate is the professional badass’s base HTML/CSS/JS template for a fast, robust and future-proof site.” Without being a framework or describing any philosophy of development, Boilerplate is here to deliver some tricks to help you get started fast and the right way with every HTML5 project you may be involved in. After all, the foundation is usually the same, the differences come after a while…

This HTML/CSS/JS default template comes with a bunch of performance optimizations, as well as optional goodies, such as cross-domain Flash and AJAX, and it gets even better: HTML5 Boilerplate was also build taking into consideration mobile browsers, offering an Android, iOS, Opera Mobile-adaptable markup + CSS skeleton.

One more thing: what about GPL/MIT Licensing, next to all the above? Awesome, simply awesome!

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Frontal

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:57:01 +0000

When used properly, Flash is awesome. Unfortunately, a lot of Flash sites look and feel like s**t, and increased use of devices like the iPhone or iPad could start a slow but unstoppable process of “Flash destruction,” if things continue to evolve as they did in the last few years. Speaking for myself and from the user’s point of view, I don’t want Flash to die, I just want to get best content for my desktop computer, and best content for my mobile phone or iPad (when the moment comes, probably v3 or v4 will be decent for my needs….). Considering these, Frontal could be one of those many tools needed to help developers save Flash. Why that?

Think about what Frontal stands for – this is an intuitive scripting and markup language able to generate Flash, thus enabling you to quickly create sites and Web-based apps without having to write countless lines of code! To make it all worth your time, Frontal can easily embed a wide range of Web technologies, including Ajax, HTML/HTML5, JavaScript, and it even offers support for deep linking!

The official page I linked to in the previous paragraph has a lot of examples, tutorials, and a well done user’s guide, so if you want to create fluid layouts and decrease the development time, you know what to do… after all, there’s only one price: a small chunk of your time, since Frontal comes under the terms of the BSD License. Good luck and be sure to come up with the best products that you can – Flash must not die!

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Flash Platform Services

Adrian — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:02:22 +0000

If you want an easy way to distribute and monetize your application or to add social and collaborative capabilities to your applications, Adobe can help you with Adobe Flash Platform Services.

Using Distribution service you can share your application to social networks, mobile devices, and desktops. It also enables developers and businesses to track the distribution of and user engagement with their applications. Finally, it enables monetization of applications through ad hosting.

Paid promotion provides guaranteed installs for applications that might not otherwise be easily discovered by users. When you buy promotion for your application through the Distribution Manager, the Gigya network starts offering your application to users when they are embedding another application through the Share menu.

Prices for Distribution service are: for sharing the service is free, for promotion the only price is per-install, tracking is free.

Through Adobe Flash Platform Services Flex developers can easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA (rich Internet applications). For now the Adobe Flash Collaboration Service is only available as beta version. Adobe Flash Collaboration Service beta includes VOIP Audio, Webcam Video, Chat, Real-Time File Sharing, Multi-User Whiteboards, Roles and Permissions and more. To get access to the Adobe Flash Collaboration Service and Adobe Flash Collaboration Service SDK, you will need to create a developer account.

Soon, using Adobe Flash Platform Services you can enable applications to integrate with leading social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

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dfGallery

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:34:00 +0000

One of these days, I will go out and start shooting. No, I am not crazy – I’ll take pictures, I won’t shoot anyone! Anyway, guns are illegal here, so we’ll stick to a bunch of images being displayed in a browser. Obviously, it’s about a free Flash image gallery, as you can see below…

… and its name is dfGallery, currently at version 2.0. Requiring only the Apache rewrite module with PHP 5+, php_json and php_curl extensions to be in place on your server, this free Flash gallery comes with a bunch of features, like customizable layout (custom themes/PNG skins), Flickr/Picasa gallery loading, AJAX & Multiple Image Uploads, background music… and it doesn’t stop here!

I don’t know what else there is to say, since the official page should say it all. By the way, the test image gallery with 3D chicks is awesome, you really need to check it out… and see how dfGallery works, too, in the process.

Compatibility: all major browsers, as long as you have the Adobe Flash Player installed and working properly

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