In last article of this series, we learnt how we can make an MP3 Player for our websites that will continue to entertain our visitors by playing continuous music. We used Macromedia Flash MX 2004 to create such a player. In this episode, we will learn how to integrate our Player that we created in first part with Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX.
Read MoreMusic is considered as the food for our souls. I personally know many people (including me) who love to listen to music while using computer for any reason, be it surfing over internet, developing different applications, checking E-mails, or any other work. So don’t you guys think that adding an MP3 player to your website will be a very pleasing add-on for your visitors? That player will play your selected MP3s continuously one after another like a radio-station without purchasing costly services for streaming your music files over the internet. When the user will be watching your website, he will be enjoying not only the great contents of your website but hear your great music as well. There are two popular methods of doing this.
1) Purchase costly Real-media, Windows Media or QuickTime Streaming service. All of these services require their respective player’s existence on the target client so many of your clients might not enjoy your hard work.
2) Use Macromedia Flash MX 2004 to create and stream the MP3s over the internet which requires only the Flash Player to be installed on the target client. According to News.com’s survey report, Macromedia Flash Player is installed on more then 98% computers on the internet, so you can show your work to maximum possible clients.
To complete this article you will need:
In the first article of this series, we learned how to integrate Flash movies with Visual Basic.Net using flash's FSCommands functionality. Now in this article, we will further improve our knowledge of integrating Flash with VB.Net as in this episode; we are going to make a MP3 Player by using Flash and VB.Net. It will be a windows based desktop application that will let you choose MP3 files from your local hard drive and play it by using Flash's built-in Multimedia components. The theme of this article is not only to teach you how to play MP3 files by integrating Flash and VB .NET but more to show you how to integrate and communicate with local files of any computer by using Visual Basic .Net and then passing information to Flash.
Read MoreWelcome to the final article in the series on drawing with ActionScript. In this article, I'll put together what we've covered in the first two articles to create an application that lets you draw lines in Flash. You'll use your mouse to draw the lines and you'll be able to choose their thickness and colour. We'll also add a Clear button so you can erase the drawing.
Read MoreGraphical User interfaces once used to be a non-important feature of corporate applications, the developers used to emphasize more on logic, efficiency & the time of development of the applications. They didn’t put much effort in creating a better user interface, this approach resulted in ugly looking application interfaces that where created after spending hundreds of hours of hard work and a very large amount of money. But now-a-days, good GUI does matter. For years, desktop applications have had very awkward looking dark blue or gray interfaces. This doesn’t mean that developers don’t want to create good looking applications. Often the reason is, to create an appealing interface of any application, the developer has to do a lot of programming so that he can create some non-conventional interfaces. Even to create a star like button, a C/C++ developer has to write loads of C++ code to achieve the task.
Read MoreIn the previous article Drawing in Flash with ActionScript, I introduced you to the drawing API in Flash. We looked at how you could create simple shapes like squares, circles and ellipses using ActionScript 1.0. We created an empty movie clip to hold the shapes and used code to change the line style and fills.
The drawing API is more useful if you create functions that you can reuse throughout your Flash movies. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create reusable functions to draw squares, rectangles, triangles, circles and ellipses. We’ll finish by creating new movie clip methods so you can draw shapes over and over again by including an external ActionScript file.
We’ll create functions to draw a:
At the end of the tutorial, we’ll convert these to methods of the MovieClip in an ActionScript file.
As with the previous article, I’ve used ActionScript 1.0 for the examples in the tutorial so you’ll need at least Flash MX to complete the exercises here. Again, I’ve assumed that you’ve got some experience in working with ActionScript and that you know how to add code to the Actions panel.
You can download the finished files from the blue Properties box that contains the article PDF. There's a heading titled Code Download and you can click the Details link next to it to get the zip file containing all of the samples.
Note: If you have difficulties downloading the source files or PDF, you might have a problem with your cookies. Delete the cookies from your machine and try again. In Internet Explorer, you can do this by choosing Tools > Internet Options... and clicking the Delete Cookies... button on the General tab.
We’ll start by writing a function to create a perfect square.
Read MoreAbout Flash Album generator
Have you ever had the need to whip up a very fast image gallery? Not only fast but a bit flashy as well? The newest extension released by DMXzone allows you to do both. Flash Album Generator is the type of album that keeps you on the same page--no moving from page to page to see each image.
Everything is all right there. In this tutorial I'll show you how incredibly easy it is to build an album. Then I'll show you how you can jazz it up and make it even cooler.
This video tutorial is all about our latest extension Flash Album Generator the video is diveded into three parts;
» Part 1: Generating the album This video shows you how to startup your extension and how to create your own photo album (turn on your speakers).» Part 2: Editing your album Joyce shows you how you edit the properties of the photo album using the property inspector of Dreamweaver.
» Part3: Styling your album The final movie shows you how to enhance your photo album using Fireworks.
Read MoreIn first episode of this article, we created an application that enables us to record our Audio/Video message using Macromedia Flash Communication server. In this second and final episode of this two-article series, we will send that recorded message to the receiver, in addition to this; we will also create a flash movie that will display the received message to the receiver.
I have divided the whole process in four main areas:
1) Send the information of the message, message receiver & message sender, to the server-side language (i.e. PHP in our case).
2) Write a script in PHP that can receive information from the flash movie & can send a detailed e-mail to the desired person in accordance with the information provided to it.
3) Create a flash movie that will receive information about the video message from the server-side language & will show that message to the receiver.
4) Write a PHP script that will be used to display the video message to the mail receiver & this script will also provide some information to the flash movie that is responsible to display the received message.
Read MoreYou’re probably used to using the drawing tools in Flash to create artwork. Like me, you’re probably familiar with the Pen, Line, Rectangle and Oval Tools within Flash but did you know that Flash includes a drawing API that lets you dynamically create shapes using ActionScript?
Within this tutorial, I’ll introduce to you to the drawing API and show you how to draw simple shapes. We’ll create squares, rectangles, triangles, circles and ellipses, all using ActionScript. You’ll learn how to change the style of lines and add solid and gradient fills.
I’ve used ActionScript 1.0 for the examples in the tutorial and you’ll need at least Flash MX to complete the exercises here. I’ve assumed that you’ve got some experience at working with ActionScript and that you know how to add code in the Actions panel.
You can download the finished files from the blue Properties box that contains the article PDF. There's a heading titled Code Download and you can click the Details link next to it to get the zip file.
Note: If you have difficulties downloading the source files or PDF, you might have a problem with your cookies. Delete the cookies from your machine and try again. In Internet Explorer, you can do this by choosing Tools > Internet Options… and clicking the Delete Cookies… button on the General tab.
You may have noticed that some Web sites display an XML icon and offer their news headlines via RSS syndication. You might also have wondered what RSS is and how you can use it at your own Web site. That’s why I’ve written this article - to help you learn about RSS and to show you how you can use Flash to include RSS headlines at your Web site.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to display Macromedia news headlines from the Flash Developer Centre on your own Web site. We’ll use the XMLConnector component and data binding so you will hardly have to write any ActionScript at all.
This tutorial uses the XMLConnector data component so you’ll need to have Flash MX 2004 Professional to work through the example here. You’ll learn about working with this component and using it to bind data to other User Interface (UI) components. You don’t need a lot of scripting experience to complete the tutorial but I have assumed that you know how to write ActionScript using the Actions panel.
You can download the source files for the tutorial from the blue Properties box that contains the article PDF. There's a heading titled Code Download and you can click the Details link next to it to get the zip file. The download includes the starter files you'll need as well as the completed files.
Note: If you have difficulties downloading the source files or PDF, you might have a problem with your cookies. Delete the cookies from your machine and try again. In Internet Explorer, you can do this by choosing Tools > Internet Options… and clicking the Delete Cookies… button on the General tab.
This is the final tutorial in the series on scripted motion. I’m going to show you another way to create animations in your movies using the Transition and Tween classes. These classes are built into Flash MX 2004 Professional so you can take advantages of the effects they create by writing some simple ActionScript. This tutorial will show you classes and explain how to use them to create animations within your movies.
In the earlier tutorials in the series, I looked at creating motion in a straight line and in a circle, fades and rotations, adding inertia and gravity effects and creating a spring effect. You won’t need to have completed those tutorials before you start this one.
Unlike the other tutorials, you’ll need to have Flash MX 2004 Professional to be able to work through the examples here. All of the examples are shown in ActionScript 2.0. I’ve assumed that you know how to add ActionScript in the Actions panel.
You can download the source files for the tutorial from the blue Properties box that contains the article PDF. There's a heading titled Code Download and you can click the Details link next to it to get the zip file. The download includes the starter files you'll need as well as the completed files.
Note: If you have difficulties downloading the source files or PDF, you might have a problem with your cookies. Delete the cookies from your machine and try again. In Internet Explorer, you can do this by choosing Tools > Internet Options… and clicking the Delete Cookies… button on the General tab.