Actionscript 3 « Scott Rockers' Blog - Website Designer and Developer, Flash, Wordpress, jQuery, and Other Scripts

Actionscript 3

Origins XML Website – Flash and Mobile Website Template

Monday, April 18th, 2011

I have finally finished up my first full Flash Template Website for sale on Activeden, and its called Origins XML Website – Flash and Mobile Website Template and its a Flash XML Website that also comes with a mobile version of the template. All you have to do is update one set of xml files and it completely generates a mobile version of the Flash website for you. Origins is the accumulation of all my best selling files remastered into one website with added functionality and features. This file was 6 months in the making and its really exciting to finally get it live.

Origins Flash Website is deep-linking for added SEO (allowing the user to go to particular pages by direct links), fully XML driven, and modularly built. Create as many pages as you want, and reuse as many modules as you need. From the main logo and footer text, to the main navigation icons, everything can be changed by simply editing the XML settings files, so no Flash knowledge is needed.

The mobile site uses php to gather its content so the preview is hosted on my site, view the Origins Mobile Website Now!

Features

Fully Generated Mobile Website
Fully XML Driven
SWFAddress Deep Linking Menu (Added SEO )
9 Page Modules (see examples and images below)

Simple Page Module
RocFolio 1 Page Module
RocFolio 2 Page Module
jQuery: PrettyPhoto LightBox Page Module (show images or movies, including YouTube, Vimeo, and QuickTime )
Piecemaker 2 Page Module
News Feed Ticker Page Module
Contact Form Page Module
Simple Link Module
Loading Swf Page Module

Full Music Player
Page Specific Backgrounds Images
Autostart Page Feature
Social Links Menu
PSD File of 48 Icons Ready for Use
PSD Website Template File
Detailed help file for installation and customization

Mobile Version Website

At the present time, Flash doesn’t run well on most hand-held devices. Heck, some devices don’t run it at all! To circumnavigate this, I decided to create a mobile version to accompany the Flash Website. It’s completely mobile-friendly and is created from all of the same XML config files used to create the Flash Site. This means there’s no need to update a ton of other files to create the site; Edit only one set of XML files to update both the Flash and Mobile versions of your site! The mobile website uses jQTouch which is a jQuery plugin for mobile web development on the iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, and other forward-thinking devices. View the Demo Here

Customizable Header Area

In the header section you can easily add your own logo image, and you can either display, hide, or just deactivate the music player altogether. All this is controlled through the XML config files.

Customizable Menu Area

In the menu section, you can easily add and remove as many menu items as you need. You can change the icon, text, text color, and text padding. Then easily assign each menu item to a particular module.

Customizable Footer Area

In the footer section you can easily add your own footer text, and include all of your own social media links with the associated icon.

Simple Page Module

The Simple Page Module is exactly that, a simple Page. You can change the image of the page we well as any text in the scrollable HTML text area. The text area supports changes in text size, color, hyper-links and images all formatted through HTML documentation.

About Page Module

The About Page Module is based off one of my best selling files called RocFolio. This module is perfect for an about page, staff page, or for anyone wanting to display their latest featured work. You can either populate the slides with a RSS feed (or any feed type), or use the sample XML file that’s included. If you use a feed, the content automatically updates when a post is made to that feed.

Portfolio Page Module

The Portfolio Page Module is based off my second version of RocFolio. This module is perfect for a portfolio page, feature page, services page, or products page. Similar to the About Page Module, you can either populate the slides with an RSS feed (or any feed type), or use the sample XML file that’s included. If you use a feed, the content automatically updates when a post is made to that feed. Also, this page module comes with three columns of editable text.

Piecemaker 2 Page Module

The Piecemaker 2 Page Module is built off the Piecemaker 2, a free 3D Flash image rotator gallery. This module is perfect for displaying any type of content including images, swf files, and videos. The Piecemaker 2 includes several new features including improved navigation, tooltips, animated shadows, and unlimited effects. The piecemaker module does not work with the cs3 version of the FLA .

Photos Page Module

The Photos Page Module uses the popular jquery lightbox clone called prettyPhoto. This module is perfect for an image gallery or slideshow. Each image gives you the option for an description field as well.

Videos Page Module

The Videos Page Module uses prettyPhoto just like the photos page module. But for this page module, you can add as many youtube, vimeo, or .MOV video files as you want. Each video gives you the option for a description field as well.

News Feed Page Module

The News Feed Page Module is another one of my best selling files called Flash News Feed Ticker and its compatible with all feed types (RSS and ATOM , directions included on how to handle these feed types). This module automatically grabs the first image in each feed post to display, and updates automatically. If you don’t want to use a feed then you can use the news feed sample XML file. You can easily change the colors, size and several other options all through the XML configuration file.

Link Module

The Link Module allows you to make the navigational item a link to anywhere you like.

Contact Page Module

The Contact Page Module allows you to setup a contact page with email validation already included. There are also two HTML text areas included on this module that are editable.

Music Player

The Musicplayer can be easily customized through an XML configuration file and you can change the colors and add as many songs as you like. The music player shows the song name, the artist name, the album name, and supports album art.

Tags: Actionscript 3, ActiveDen, CSS, Design, Development, Flash, Mobile Website, Origins, SEO
Posted in Sellable Items | No Comments »

The Dreamy Spoon Website

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Yesterday, I finished developing another website called The Dreamy Spoon. The Dreamy Spoon is a Self Served Frozen Desserts Store located in Maumelle , Arkansas and it a full flash website that also has a wordpress blog with it. This has to be one the most fun websites I have done in a while, partly because of the silliness of the design (which was done by Cody Scott of Kinetic Media Solutions ). Some of the special things about the website are they it uses SWFAddress to increase SEO and add the ability to go straight to a specific page, as well as a custom MP3 music player, and all the animations were pretty cool too. The website includes everything from a flavors page, a contact page, and links to the social media websites.

One of the hardest things to code for the website was getting the stage to resize correctly when the user resizes the browser window, because the grassy hills had to stay at the bottom and the cloud background had to scale correctly.

To increase SEO, I created the The Dreamy Spoon Blog (made from WordPress) that the owner could add news posts and I also duplicated the flash pages into wordpress pages and basically hide them from the user (meaning no actual links to them), but when I submit a sitemap to Google Web Mastertools I will include those links so they get indexed.

This might be the best flash website I have done so far and it was a lot of fun to work on, let me know what you guys think.

Cya

Tags: Actionscript 3, Development, Flash, music player, SEO, SWFAddress, Wordpress
Posted in Freelance Projects | No Comments »

Flash News Feed Ticker

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

I have just finished working on another file for sale on ActiveDen and its a Flash News Feed Ticker. This is the second version of my News Feed Ticker, and the biggest difference is that I implemented an XML file to style it and for customization reasons, and it has a lot of improvements including:

It’s compatible with all feed types (RSS and ATOM )
This ticker automatically grabs the first image in each feed post to display
It updates automatically
It is completely customizable through an XML file so there is no need to even open up Flash to edit it
Completely re-sizable so that it fits to any size container
Easy to change the number of posts you want displayed

This news feed ticker, or reader as some people call them, includes three different skins or themes: a dark, a light, and a social media skin. Also if you want to customize the look and feel of it, you can do this very easily by editing the colors in the XML settings file or by editing the symbols in the Flash file’s library. Also there is an in-depth help file included.

Cya

Tags: Actionscript 3, ActiveDen, Design, Development, feed reader, Flash, news ticker
Posted in Sellable Items | No Comments »

WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook Review

Friday, June 25th, 2010

As you may know, I have completed quite a few projects and written several posts regarding the integration of Flash and WordPress. In fact, my latest project was a complete Flash and WordPress Website called RocFolio 2.

A few weeks ago I was excited to be contacted by Packt Publishing. They asked me to review one of their books, “WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook”. I was honored that they contacted me and excited for the opportunity to read through their book and see what I could learn. Here is the book information followed by my review.

Book Information

Full Title: WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook
Author(s): Peter Spannagle, Sarah Soward
Pages: 268
Published: April 2010
Publisher: Packt Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-847198-82-2

My Review

The book as a whole is written well and includes over 50 simple and effective techniques on how to control certain tasks relating to Flash content in WordPress. The easy-to-follow step by step instructions, and pictures to help out those of us who are more visual, that accompany the techniques make integrating Flash and WordPress a fairly straightforward process.

This book is aimed at new or intermediate WordPress users who are interested in learning how to create the unique and media-rich sites that using plug-ins and Flash can provide, so much of the book’s content I was already fairly familiar with. But for the newer user looking to enhance their personal or business sites and blogs, this book definitely contains strategies and techniques to help you do just that. Just remember that a working knowledge of XHTML, CSS, and graphic design is helpful and familiarity with WordPress is required, because the book does not address the basic mechanics of using WordPress itself. Also, any previous experience with Flash is helpful but not necessary.

Honestly, the Cookbook focused more on how to add, edit, and embed Flash into WordPress than an actual integration of the two, which is what I had originally thought it was going to be about. It also mentions several really nice WordPress plug-ins, some of which were strictly for helping you add and control Flash on your WordPress site, while others mentioned are to help you with SEO, Google Sitemaps, and optimizing your WordPress site as a whole. The Cookbook also delves into some Actionscript 3.0 scripting which is followed by examples paired with actual code. Here are links to some of the plug-ins the book mentions that I found to be particularly helpful tools in building a WordPress site:

Kimili Flash Embed Plugin
Dean’s FKCEditor Plugin
Google Sitemaps XML Plugin
SEO Title Tags Plugin
FLV Embed Plugin

If you don’t know how to use these plug-ins, or have an overall desire to learn more about Flash content within WordPress, the WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook definitely explains in detail the best way to do so. Overall, this book is a great reference and would be a helpful addition to your desk or workspace, especially if you’re a new or intermediate designer/developer. Hey, even if you’re an advanced user it could still come in handy, teaching you something you might have missed along the way as you taught yourself… we all have something to learn. Right?

Cya

Tags: Actionscript 3, Cookbook, Flash, html, Plugin, Wordpress
Posted in Freelance Projects | No Comments »

Flash WordPress Template called RocFolio 2

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

I have just finished my second website template, it’s a Flash WordPress Template called RocFolio 2. This Flash WordPress Template is perfect as a portfolio or if you want to display your latest featured work in a great way. If you use wordpress, then it automatically updates itself by getting the information from your wordpress site after you make new posts. If you don’t have a wordpress blog, a sample XML file is included that you can use. This template is very easy to use, easy to setup, and easy to customize all through XML . RocFolio 2 comes with a help file and 5 different themes. The different flash themes include a Dark, Light, Bokeh, Starfield, and Two-Tone version, or you can customize the look and feel of it very easily. Also, each templates include a contact form with error checking, and a muic player with tons of features. This Flash WordPress Template includes navigation for going between multiple Feeds (or multiple sample xml files) or external links, and another navigational menu that can be used as social media menu that has a special random letter hover effect. Like I have said before, if you use wordpress then it automically updates itself through the RSS feed of the site, and then it automatically grabs the first image in the post to display. This template can be customizable through 4 simple XML files, uses tweener for smooth transitions, and has a 3 column layout layout with headers that have the ability to add an image, use text, or both. There are tons of other features and options, and I hope you enjoy it.

RocFolio 2 is the second version of one of my best selling items on ActiveDen.net. First first version, RocFolio, is more geared towards being a Flash and WordPress Portfolio Template, because it can only take in a single RSS Feed, unlike RocFolio 2 where you can go between multiple rss feeds or wordpress categories. Below is a preview image of RocFolio. It its not fully customizable by XML like RocFolio 2 is but its still really easy to use and setup through Flash.