vrijdag, mei 25, 2007
Flash gets competition
In the battle for RIA (Rich Internet Applications), the dominant Flash player (from Adobe) gets competition from all sides.
Flash is currently installed on 80-90% or even more of browsers, and is also a very popular learning format because of its excellent compression. It is a safe bet to develop for flash because it is the dominant technology by far. But in the future, we might have to consider competing technologies, just as we have to live with multiple browsers, platforms, etc.
- AJAX of course is a popular technology, and makes use of JavaScript on the client side
- Microsoft announced the beta version of Silverlight, a direct Flash competitor and a light version of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) technology in .NET 3.0. There is a cross-browser, cross-platform player for Silverlight and some demo's available.
- Sun just announced the JavaFX scripting language to create rich applications (also for mobile phones etc)
- And the creator of the Ruby on Rails open source framework has his own opinions on all of this as you can read in this InfoWorld article
Will all this mean progress for the web user or double work for site developers?
Flash is currently installed on 80-90% or even more of browsers, and is also a very popular learning format because of its excellent compression. It is a safe bet to develop for flash because it is the dominant technology by far. But in the future, we might have to consider competing technologies, just as we have to live with multiple browsers, platforms, etc.
- AJAX of course is a popular technology, and makes use of JavaScript on the client side
- Microsoft announced the beta version of Silverlight, a direct Flash competitor and a light version of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) technology in .NET 3.0. There is a cross-browser, cross-platform player for Silverlight and some demo's available.
- Sun just announced the JavaFX scripting language to create rich applications (also for mobile phones etc)
- And the creator of the Ruby on Rails open source framework has his own opinions on all of this as you can read in this InfoWorld article
Will all this mean progress for the web user or double work for site developers?
Labels: ajax, flash, silverlight
zondag, november 26, 2006
Battle of the flash
Next week I'll be in Berlin for the yearly Online Educa conference. My company (IBM) is gold sponsor, and I wanted to have a series of selected flash movies play continuously at the demo point we are setting up. Shouldn't be too difficult, I thought. I was wrong...
Problem 1 : how can I play a bunch of movies in a playlist continuously?
Two solutions: either use a flash player with a playlist, or use a flash packager that packages a series of movies together in one executable file.
I tried a lot of shareware or freeware flash players : Captivate Player, FlowPlayer, Super Flash Player, Arty Flash Player but the best one is the free Flash Movie Player by Eolsoft. It still didn't solve my problem because the Flash Movie Players all seem either to have problems playing some of my files, or they stop/hang on a movie with an open ending and wait for you to push 'next movie'. So that didn't help.
As for flash packaging tool, I found Flash2X Exe Packager and Flash Packager by GozTun software. The first tool is a shareware that lets you make packages that run for 3 days unless you register. It also has problems with larger movies and larger lists. The one I finally selected was the free Flash Packager. It displays a popup at the start, and you can pay to get rid of the popup but otherwise it is free. (see screenshot) When a movie has finished it jumps automatically to the next one, and also loops back to the beginning. Just what I needed. Only problem is that some movies only show the first part and then jump to the next movie. I couldn't figure out how to solve this.
Problem 2 : how to make .swf files out of .exe flash movies?
I asked people at work and they told me it couldn't be done. So I googled and found some exe to swf convertors. I recommend the shareware Dream Flashsee by DreamSoft to to this, it has nice and easy wizards under the tools section. It runs a couple of times for free and requires registration afterwards.
Problem 3 : how to remove the interaction from movies?
Must admit I didn't quite get it to work for all movies I wanted to, but I did manage after a lot of experimentation to delete some 'stop()' functions in the .swf files and have them skip the introsection. I bought a shareware to accomplish this: Flash Digger Plus. This tools allows you to open an .swf file and change text, extract sound and images and delete some sections such as ActionScript. Another tool I used is the shareware SWF Quicker by SoThink. It is a light and extremely cheap version of Flash to open and edit flash movies. It's complicated for someone like me who doesn't know flash, but does allow you to see the scripts etc inside the file.
Problem 4 : how can you clip flash movies?
I don't think you can. If only it was as simple as video files where you can select the part you want with tools such as Windows Movie Maker and make a new movie... So I'm using the full movies, not parts of them.
So, in the end I have a list of 10+ movies packaged in an .exe file that will run continuously at our demopoint in Berlin. Phew.
- The situation:
- I have a lot of flash movies, some in .exe format, and others in .swf format. Some of those run autonomously but go in a waiting loop at the end, and others are based on interaction where the user has to click a play or next button.
- The complication:
- I need to have a number of movies run one after another and then repeat the whole serie, without any interaction.
- The question:
- How can I do that?
Problem 1 : how can I play a bunch of movies in a playlist continuously?
Two solutions: either use a flash player with a playlist, or use a flash packager that packages a series of movies together in one executable file.
I tried a lot of shareware or freeware flash players : Captivate Player, FlowPlayer, Super Flash Player, Arty Flash Player but the best one is the free Flash Movie Player by Eolsoft. It still didn't solve my problem because the Flash Movie Players all seem either to have problems playing some of my files, or they stop/hang on a movie with an open ending and wait for you to push 'next movie'. So that didn't help.As for flash packaging tool, I found Flash2X Exe Packager and Flash Packager by GozTun software. The first tool is a shareware that lets you make packages that run for 3 days unless you register. It also has problems with larger movies and larger lists. The one I finally selected was the free Flash Packager. It displays a popup at the start, and you can pay to get rid of the popup but otherwise it is free. (see screenshot) When a movie has finished it jumps automatically to the next one, and also loops back to the beginning. Just what I needed. Only problem is that some movies only show the first part and then jump to the next movie. I couldn't figure out how to solve this.
Problem 2 : how to make .swf files out of .exe flash movies?
I asked people at work and they told me it couldn't be done. So I googled and found some exe to swf convertors. I recommend the shareware Dream Flashsee by DreamSoft to to this, it has nice and easy wizards under the tools section. It runs a couple of times for free and requires registration afterwards.
Problem 3 : how to remove the interaction from movies?
Must admit I didn't quite get it to work for all movies I wanted to, but I did manage after a lot of experimentation to delete some 'stop()' functions in the .swf files and have them skip the introsection. I bought a shareware to accomplish this: Flash Digger Plus. This tools allows you to open an .swf file and change text, extract sound and images and delete some sections such as ActionScript. Another tool I used is the shareware SWF Quicker by SoThink. It is a light and extremely cheap version of Flash to open and edit flash movies. It's complicated for someone like me who doesn't know flash, but does allow you to see the scripts etc inside the file.
Problem 4 : how can you clip flash movies?
I don't think you can. If only it was as simple as video files where you can select the part you want with tools such as Windows Movie Maker and make a new movie... So I'm using the full movies, not parts of them.
So, in the end I have a list of 10+ movies packaged in an .exe file that will run continuously at our demopoint in Berlin. Phew.
Labels: dream flashsee, flash, flash digger, flash movie player, flash packager, online educa, swf quicker
maandag, november 13, 2006
Flash
Flash is a very popular delivery medium for e-learning and increasing in popularity. The obvious reason is it makes content literally more 'flashy'. It gives a visually more attractive experience and can increase interaction. Another reason, enough on its own, is that flash is an excellent compression format and sound and video delivered over the internet in flash take less bandwidth than other popular formats such as .wav, .wmv or .mp3.
Big courseware makers such as NETg/KnowledgeNet make all their new courses in flash format. Of course, students are expected to have a flash player installed on their system, but that is an assumption that holds for most part of computers nowadays. There might be some security issues with older flash content and the newer, more restrictive flash players, but all in all flash is an excellent technology e-learning.
For me, the major drawbacks are 1) search engines cannot index it so it never shows up in search results and 2) you need to by expensive tools such as Adobe/Macromedia Flash to make it and it can be quite complex. I haven't ever tried to make a flash file, but if I am going to I will use a cheap tool called SWF Quicker (http://www.sothink.com/product/swfquicker/index.htm).
Some other resource I'd like to share are:
Big courseware makers such as NETg/KnowledgeNet make all their new courses in flash format. Of course, students are expected to have a flash player installed on their system, but that is an assumption that holds for most part of computers nowadays. There might be some security issues with older flash content and the newer, more restrictive flash players, but all in all flash is an excellent technology e-learning.
For me, the major drawbacks are 1) search engines cannot index it so it never shows up in search results and 2) you need to by expensive tools such as Adobe/Macromedia Flash to make it and it can be quite complex. I haven't ever tried to make a flash file, but if I am going to I will use a cheap tool called SWF Quicker (http://www.sothink.com/product/swfquicker/index.htm).
Some other resource I'd like to share are:
- http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~cczjrt/Editor/ : beta program for making flash-based courses
- http://www.bestflashanimationsite.com/archive/educational/ : best of flash for education (Especially the Chernobyl sample go to me. The Jeruzalem museum one is also nice.)
Labels: flash
