Flash 101

When working on a single scene Flash Application such as Zoomify, you can easily insert a splash screen to display instructions or terms of use. This can be done by inserting a scene before the application scene and setting it as a keyframe. Then add you text and graphics to the scene stage including a button. Under actions for the frame add a single line of code containing stop() which will prevent the user from seeing the application contained in the second frame. Click on the button and add to the Actions

on (release) {
nextFrame();
}

There are excellent video tutorials available at the Adobe Design Center Video Workshop. IfBin Also provides high quality flash and flex examples including source code through an interesting downloadable browser based interface.

Zoomify based Flash app

I am in the process of creating a flash application based on customized Zoomify components. Zoomify makes high-quality images zoom-and-pan for fast, interactive viewing on the web. Just JPEGs, HTML, and Flash. This will allow us to make use of large scale imagery created for print purposes on the web.

Google Webmaster Tools

I have been using Google Webmaster Tools to get comprehensive statistics and error information about the pages in my company's site. In addition, Google Webmaster Tools offer diagnostics and management of Google's crawling and indexing of your website, including Sitemap submission and reporting.

This type of tool helps with understanding what exactly is accessible through Google and how to optimize your site for Google and other search engines.

ColdFusion Flash Form

I have been working on a ColdFusion Flash Form. It is written in ColdFusion but outputs a swf which runs in the Flash Player. The result is Rich Form Application complete with tabbed navigation and all the other bells and whistles we've come to expect from Flash. Even Before I implemented a custom style sheet based on Nahuel's post on ASFusion the form was pretty but afterwards it really has that wow effect. I'm still struggling with decreasing the load time and getting the pre-loader to display progress accurately but I'm confident I'll work it out.

phpGoogleStoreLocator

I have implemented a significantly customized version of Ryan Coulombe's phpGoolgeStoreLocator. A stock demo of this application can be viewed here. My customizations include seamless integration into an already existing site template, removal of features unnecessary to my client, styling output with css, a few bug fixes and the all important removal of the "Powered by..." statement, which proved slightly more difficult than one would think due to the cryptic (133t) method of output Ryan chose to employ. More details of my implementation can be viewed in my posts to the CrystalDawn.net phpGoogleStoreLocator Forums.