Tag: flash

Good News For All Us Font Freaks

I grouse frequently and often about how limited the selection of “core” fonts is with which to use in web design. Some say there are 16. Some say there are only 3. 16 or 3 it’s bound to come up with a client that the font you’ve used is “too clinical”,”schoolkid-like”,”typewriter-ish”,”dull”,”really bad”,”bad, awful, not at all what I want”…etc. You bow your head in shame. After all, if you were any kind of good web designer you could make the font pretty,couldn’t you?

Actually… I have a ka-ba-ja-zillion fonts downloaded to my computer so yes I can use any freaking font I want and I will see it in the design. You will not. You will see a default list of fail safe, dull, old universal core fonts. If everyone downloaded 10 fonts a day for the rest of their lives there would still be a big fat chance that the font you are using isn’t going to be in their computer. ‘Cause of all the fonts there are in the world.

Give us web designers a little bitty break,puleese. The reason we stoop so low as Arial is because it is the number one font everyone is bound to have. We might get all crazy and try to use Century Gothic because maybe 65% of the internets have it loaded but the rest sees Arial and thinks it sucks.

sIFR to the rescue. And if you use WordPress,Alejandro U. Alvarez to the rescue.

You should take a look at this picture,
otherwise you may have trouble understanding what the name field means or what selector means.

Also you should know that his plugin uses sIFR version 2 so you cannot use Ian Purton’s online conversion tool.

Alejandro included a command script you can run in Flash to automatically get your fonts and make swfs but I found it easier to download my own copy of sIFR package version 2.0.2. I opened sifr.fla in Flash, selected my font and then exported the movie in mac flash version 8. I closed sifr.fla without saving the changes.

I uploaded the font.swf to the right folder in the custom fonts plugin folder and I edited the custom_font.php file as instructed. His instructions are on the plugin page,so scroll down to find them.

I tried to do it his way with command> run command script he provided but when I used the produced swf I got this output on my page titles “text made by sifr version 3” or something similar. This just meant I was using incompatible versions of either mac flash or sIFR! Yeah, as simple as that.

I am not as nifty as Ian Purton but if you need a font you can email me the .ttf or .ot font you would like converted to a .swf and I will make you one in Flash. It takes about a minute to do. i may even already have it.

I should tell you that I am using Baar Sophia but what you are probably seeing is Trebuchet MS or Helvectica. And if you haven’t got those fonts you’re probably seeing Times New Roman.

Or *censored* Arial.

On the hunt for Flash and XML

Sites for this post

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.

Primitive Flash Slideshow

I learned a bit about ming and php and was able to make that really primitive slideshow you see below with what I learned.

I didn’t know php could create swfs on the fly but after a couple days of wondering if I should just go buy the software, I stumbled upon a script that creates swfs from php.

And even though it isn’t nearly as cool as the one from [url=http://www.maani.us/slideshow/index.php]maani.us[/url] it is free, whereas he wants $45 bucks a pop or $550 for an unlimited license for his slideshow.

So while I am still working for free to develop my portfolio it’s cost effective to create free swfs and try to make them look better with php than to buy the stuff that makes them look cool.

Revision: I had that movie loaded as a test of how one could embed flash from another domain,using a dumb little movie I threw together with Ming.But I forgot: the swf was loaded onto a folder of another site and I deleted it! Retarded! I know,sorry.So I put in this other thing by Jeroen.However, it isn’t going to load because of the flashvars set in the movie swf.So the loading gif will twirl forever.