At the meantime another application such as Microsoft Excel or Word, or even a web browser could do a much better job with no extra time invested. So why don’t we combine the best of the both worlds: use Flash for GUI and a server-side technology for generating printable content in the most suitable format?
In this article we will build a simple Flash interface to be utilized for generating Excel reports.
The reports will be produced without being displayed in the browser and the user will be prompted to save the file to the hard drive. The approach described can be applied when creating multitask portals for generating files in various file formats (ZIP, PDF, DOC, JPEG, etc) for downloading and viewing.
We will work in Dreamweaver to build the server-side functionality. Although this example is based on PHP/MySQL server model you are by no means limited by the technology. The actual example is fairly basic and will not require hand-coding.
The application we are about to build will function as follows:
- User will be presented with a combo box listing genres of available musical records.
- User will be able to select a Genre and click the “Generate Report” button.
- Clicking the button will call a server-side page which will produce the HTML output.
Alex July is a Vancouver-based (Canada, British Columbia) Web Developer/ Graphic Artist who has an extensive experience in both creative realms.