Giving the Flash Player a Life of its Own
Permenant Link To: Giving the Flash Player a Life of its Own
Have you downloaded the Flash Player version 7 beta yet? If not, get on over to Macromedia's site and download it!
If you have downloaded it, maybe you've noticed some strange goings-on in the system tray of your desktop (if you're on a Window-based computer). You may have started noticing a Flash icon appearing there on occasion. No, this is not a sign that flash has completely taken over your life. It is, however, a good sign (IMHO). It means that the Flash Player's new auto-updating feature is working. Yep, you heard it right, the Flash Player now has the built in ability to be automatically updated when a new version becomes available - all without detection scripts or a great deal of hassle to the end-user.
This is currently a Windows-only/IE feature, but let's hope it functionality expands to include everyone.
Flash developers have been wanting something like this for a long time. It will make deploying of new content much easier.
I haven't had a chance to look at all the ins and outs of this new feature, but if you want more info, take a look at the release notes for the new player.
Finally, I'm a junkie for X to SWF conversion tools. Why? Because it always make the trade of Flash development more valuable. In light of that, let me point you to a new service called image2swf.com.
For a mere $25.00 a year, these guys provide a service that allows you to dynamically load gifs, animated gifs, pngs, progressive jpgs, bitmaps, and other (natively unsupported) image files into a Flash movie. Currently, Flash can only dynamically load non-progressive jpgs, which is great, but can sometimes be a real hindrance in some projects.
Curious as to how it works? They have some simple explanations on their site.
I haven't had a chance to test the service, but at $25.00 for a year, how can you go wrong?
If you have downloaded it, maybe you've noticed some strange goings-on in the system tray of your desktop (if you're on a Window-based computer). You may have started noticing a Flash icon appearing there on occasion. No, this is not a sign that flash has completely taken over your life. It is, however, a good sign (IMHO). It means that the Flash Player's new auto-updating feature is working. Yep, you heard it right, the Flash Player now has the built in ability to be automatically updated when a new version becomes available - all without detection scripts or a great deal of hassle to the end-user.
This is currently a Windows-only/IE feature, but let's hope it functionality expands to include everyone.
Flash developers have been wanting something like this for a long time. It will make deploying of new content much easier.
I haven't had a chance to look at all the ins and outs of this new feature, but if you want more info, take a look at the release notes for the new player.
Finally, I'm a junkie for X to SWF conversion tools. Why? Because it always make the trade of Flash development more valuable. In light of that, let me point you to a new service called image2swf.com.
For a mere $25.00 a year, these guys provide a service that allows you to dynamically load gifs, animated gifs, pngs, progressive jpgs, bitmaps, and other (natively unsupported) image files into a Flash movie. Currently, Flash can only dynamically load non-progressive jpgs, which is great, but can sometimes be a real hindrance in some projects.
Curious as to how it works? They have some simple explanations on their site.
I haven't had a chance to test the service, but at $25.00 for a year, how can you go wrong?
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