Sites for this post
- MTASC download and explanation
- SWFmill download and explanation
- swfmill’s maker
- MING download,tutorials and explanation wiki
A friend of mine who works on the doop project tipped me off to swishMax which is a flash movie maker written in a kind of actionscript,er whatever, don’t quote me. I know nothing about all that kind of thing.All I know is they called it swishscript or something like that.
Anyway I downloaded it and got scared off when my first attempt to make a movie from their tutorial went fubar.I had only 15 days to work with it and I’m pretty sure my demo has since expired.I did try to deviously edit some swfs but it didn’t work.You all who license and protect your work are safe from dunderheads like me! And anyway I was only doing it becaue I wanted to learn. And that is how I learn: by picking apart a working snippet and trying to figure it all out.15 days isn’t long enough to grasp even the basics.But I think if I bought the product(only 100 dollars or so) I might be able to work with it.Which brings me to the other stuff:
swfs can be created on the fly with php.MING can make swfs with xml.SWFmill can make swfs with xml if you get some other doohickey called MTASC.
Forgive me if I get some of this wrong. I only found out about it a mere 2 days ago.
I put the links to the relevant pages at the top of this post.
Because my new client expressed a desire for flash I had to go sniff out the options.I rag on about how expensive the big products are but there really isn’t any getting around it:they are very expensive.
I know flash is pretty.All those twirly bits loading and the graphics bedazzling.Things spin about.They pop up.The colors are bright.There is no denying it; as eyecandy goes,it is sweet.
I will not make flash navigation, not when a mix of css and javascript will do the exact same thing(almost) and can be more easily edited by any text editor.
I do not like those intro pages.That isn’t to say I don’t want to learn how to make one…
But I am getting the point of flash for image galleries.
I have purchased a ready made one (that’s another story) and even learned how to get javascript to produce a swf with swfobject.js.If you Google swfobject.js you’ll find it right off. It’s free and there are tutorials and explanations.
Now,back to the salt mines for me.