Finetune
I found this site today.It lets you make your own music playlists.Ok, maybe there are a lot of sites who let you do that.Maybe they also have all the music in the world.I don’t know.But Finetune has all the music in the world and lets you make as many playlists as you want.And on top of that it is a really cool looking site. Now I have to go and find out how to install my own player(they let you do that,too).
Category: Technical Blog
On the hunt for Flash and XML
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.
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.
Moving day part 2
I finally grasped and completed the process of a domain name transfer from one registrar to another.I have a domain mccormicky.com and I want to keep it because it was my nickname and it was the only nickname I ever had that I actually liked.
I owe Lycos an apology for thinking they’d be an obstacle to the transfer.But that isn’t to say that they make it easy because they kind of don’t.
Continue reading Moving day part 2