Daniel Apt wrote a great article about Flash Websites, the Pros and Cons. It’s easier to say not to use Flash, or to use, however Daniel gives you the reasons and options on where to use Flash or not. He talks about common issues as Graphics, 3D, SEO, Development and more. It’s really worth a look!

Flash Websites: the Pros and Cons

Flashtuning has made available for free one of his components, in this case the X-Treme Accordion XML. The menu is fully customizable and includes the following features:

- No Flash Knowledge required to insert the Accordion SWF inside the HTML page(s) of your site
- Fully customizable XML driven content
- Customizable width, height and item size
- View gallery images by using the thumb menu and left / right end arrows
- AutoPlay / Previous / Next with global or individual timer for each image
- Advanced effects for the description text, image zoom and panning effects
- …and more

Take a look at FlashUser.net

Myna Features Highlights:

Powerful Clip Editing
Trim, Loop, Stretch and Reverse your audio clips, width editable loop points, and interactive time stretch capabilities.

Automation
Easily add fade-ins, fade-outs, pan from left to right, and modify gain over time, with editable control points.

Effects
Add non-destructive effects to your audio clips including Pitch Change, Reverb, Delay, Parametric EQ, and more.

Import / Export
Import your own audio files, or search one of our provided libraries. Mix it down and export directly to your desktop or publish back to your account.

Share and learn
Collaborate with other users. Follow step-by-step tutorials to learn new skills.

Find out more at http://aviary.com/tools/myna

Flash Scope made available a list of some nice and cool free flash components. Some of them are well know however there are some new one’s which are very useful.

The list includes:

Free Flash Gallery
Thumbnail Grid
Map V
Stackflow with Scrollbar
Media List V. 1.0
Flash Full Text Search Component
FLV List Gallery V. 1.3.1
Free Flash menu navigation
Carousel with Auto-scroll feature and Grey Effect
IMG Loop Flash Component
Luxurious Analog Clock
UMap
Free Flash-XML Poll Component
Flow List
Free Flash-XML Image Rotator

Take a look! It’s worth it.

Oaxoa Blog is sharing a Class developed by Pierluigi Pesenti about electric discharge effects. The demos are pretty cool and the effects run very smoothly. This is one of the best effect I have seen in Flash. pretty good work.

Take some time to test the demos, if ou wish you may also download the source code for each movie.

FlashUser is sharing a new application available to download for free. This time you can grab a XML News Viewer with a nice accordion style menu to read messages.

This application was developed using AS2, download the source and change the FLA to suite your own needs.

Here’s a cool Free Flash Gallery allowing multiple categories, slideshow, zoom, and more. Evrything is loaded from a XML file, it’s very easy to setup and you also can customize it has you wish using the source code available to download.

This gallery is simple but very cool and clean.

I have to leave here also the link to a nice blog posting from AjaxLine which shares 30 flash components the author consider has the “best”. I do not agree they’re all “best” ones however it’s obvious that in a general way all of them are very useful and important.

You might want to have a look.

Kevin Hoyt submitted a 3 part article featuring the new PHP features available in Flash Builder 4.

What to expect on each part articles:

“The first part will take a look at a branding change, and move onto an overview of data-centric development. Parts two and three will talk about the role of Zend AMF, and and look at how Flash Builder 4’s PHP support is pushing new boundaries with features such as implicit paging and data management.”

The articles are available here at dZone

For those interested in a free flash contact form FlashUser has created a free one, very simple to use, customize and insert new fields.

Have a look at FlashUser and download the free application.

Pulse Particles is an AS3 particle system free of use.

The main features are:

* Configurable rule based particle behavior.
* Easily extensible
* Both a full featured object orientated syntax, and a simplified quick object syntax.
* Flash .mxp extension for easy integration for designers.
* Interactive particle explorer to create effects

Know More and Download at Rogue-Development

FlashTuts posted an article featuring some nice and FREE flash applications that might be useful for you.

The applications include:
- Modern Web UI Set
- AS2 XML Free Photo Gallery
- Audio Logo Pack 04
- ‘Nice & Clean’ Site Template
- Float

All these applications are free and with some nice themes and functionalities. It’s worth to take a look!

Code and Visual has 5 free Rainbow Live licences to give away to the 5 best Rainbow Live tutorial entries. For a limited time you can trial a fully functional installation of Rainbow Live on any server you choose by using the Domain Key “tutorialcompetition”. This Domain Key will remain valid for the duration of the competition.

Rainbow Live fills the niche between complete Flash CMS solution and XML Editor. Rainbow was built specifically to enable Flash developers to continue building XML based Flash files the way they usually do, while providing important CMS functionality out of the box – with no changes needed.

Competition Details

The competition is open to anybody that wishes to write a tutorial about Rainbow, be it a webmaster or blog author, or even someone that submits a word document. The best tutorial bearing the title from each of the following 5 categories will each receive a free Rainbow Live Domain Key for the domain of their choice – worth $99.

* Rainbow Live Flash CMS – Installation Tutorial
* Rainbow Live Flash CMS – Using Templates
* How to Use Rainbow Live as a Flash CMS
* Rainbow Live Flash CMS – Using Custom Server Side Scripts (php)
* Rainbow Live Flash CMS – Using Custom Server Side Scripts (.Net)

The winning entries will be placed on codeandvisual.com with full credit and links back to the original author’s site. All other entries will be linked to from the codeandvisual.com tutorials page.

What Entries Will be Judged On

* Simple and clear communication style
* Explaination of concepts and details
* Well written and entertaining style
* Good layout and presentation
* Use of images

How To Enter

Any tutorial that sends a ping back to “http://www.codeandvisual.com/rainbow” will be automatically entered. If you don’t own a blog, or can’t ping back, simply send your completed entry to competition [at] codeandvisual.com

Competition Deadline

The Competition will close 11:59 July 31st 2009, GMT

Some of the key benefits of Rainbow Live:

* Works with your current XML file
* Admin and User log-ins
* customisable node locking/hiding for client
* Easier for clients to use than a raw XML file
* Edit XML files live online
* Upload Images and files
* Automatically create thumbnails
* Define child templates to define your own node type
* No backend scripting necessary
* Customizable scripts
* Doesn’t dictate structure of your data/website
* Easily design the CMS to your own needs

To learn more about Rainbow Live and download an installation package, visit: http://www.codeandvisual.com/rainbow-live

Flash MiniBuilder is an online AS3 IDE that runs on your browser using Flash 10 and Java. It allows you to edit and compile swf files online.

The set of features includes:

- Solving existing names: the resolver searches recursively the current and parent scopes, the inheritance chain and imports.
- Hints for new names: the resolver searches scope, inheritance and all importable things – that can be class, interface, functions and vars defined at package level.
- Hints for new types. (class/interface): the resolver looks in all type database.
- Autoimport: when a name can’t be resolved in scope and existing imports, and can be resolved by using a new import, the new import is added to script.
- Triggers: several chars and char sequences trigger the code assist hinting as follows:
o “.” -> list members
o “:”, “new”, “as” -> list all possible types
o “(” -> hint function/constructor parameters
- Simple expression evaluation (just 2 for now):
o ’string’ and “string” are of type String and hinted accordingly
o (expr as Type) is evaluated as Type and hinted accordingly

MiniBuilder is still on his early stages but for the future more features are set to be implemented.

The Actionscript 3 migration cookbook is the ebook you should read regarding Actionscript 2.0 to 3.0 migration. This book was created by Adobe and is available to download at Adobe Developer Connection, it’s pointed for both designers and developers and according to Adobe you don’t have to be an object-oriented programmer expert to understand the content.

If you feel it’s time to migrate your applications this book might give you a good feedback on how to proceed.

There’s an article at Lifehacker causing some comments announcing that Adobe is preparing the release of Flash Mobile 10 for almost every phone OS. The release of the first beta is pointed to be announced in October at Max.

Also the article features the Adobe’s earnings presentation at slide 13 where you can confirm this announcement.

Via Lifehacker

The folks at Creative Geek Talk developed the IPinfodb service to be available in Flash and Flex using Actionscript 3.0. Now it’s possible for you to track your visitors geo location. This can be very useful even in a hidden mode to detect where your visitor’s are so that you can show your services or product according the location.

Hundreds of discussions were ans are available over the Internet, offices and more about the Flash vs Silverlight possible “nuclear war”. Opinions apart it’s pretty well know where the balance falls when to choose one of these tools to implement any work on the web.

Do you still have doubts regarding this matter? Well, smashing Magazine has put up live maybe one of the most cools comparisons between these two technologies. It’s really worth a look. At the end you will see a table showing where these two tools perform better then the other.

Another curiosity is the buzz this matter caused and still causes over user’s, there’s already a huge list of 243 answers to the article.

Anyway, Flash wins 9-5.

Silverlight vs Flash

Via FlashTuts+ I was able to meet Rainbow. This fantastic XML editor developed by Code and Visual runs in every browser with Flash Player 10. With it you can edit your XML files online.

The main features presented at flashTuts+ were:

* Edit XML files on your hard drive
* Runs in browser
* Move, delete, duplicate and rename nodes
* Add and remove multiple attributes using a simple dialog box
* Avoid writing poorly formed XML
* Save meta data into .rbw files
* Requires Flash player 10

Impressed? Well we have more:

Code and Visual is offering 5 Licenses for Rainbow Live XML Editor + CMS. This version incorporates all of the features of Rainbow with the addition of Live editing functionality.