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Integrating Flash with Microsoft VB.NET Part-1

Introduction:

Graphical 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.

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An Abstract Add Row Class for Dynamic Table Rows

Quite often we want to add dynamic functionality to our pages, but we end up writing a lot of page specific code. Then we duplicate that process for another page, and another page, until quite soon what we have is a big sopping mess! We’ve been talking about writing unobtrusive JavaScript, and what this also means is abstracting the function or class away from the data by which it is supported.

A good example is the attach document page for Yahoo! Mail. On that page I have the choice of adding up to five attachments – but what if I want to add more? I would have to save the first five, go back to the main compose interface, then click attach, and then start the process over again. This is a waste of time for a user. The smart thing to do would be to give the user the option of adding more fields if they so desire. It was smart not to clutter up the page with too many fields – and even smarter to let the user add some if they need it.


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More drawing in Flash with ActionScript

More drawing in Flash with ActionScript

In 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:

  • Square
  • Rectangle
  • Diamond
  • Triangle
  • Circle
  • Ellipse

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.

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Interface Widgets: Advanced Buttons and Navigation Bar (Part II)

Introduction

This article is the second iteration of the two-part Interface Widgets series on building web interfaces using HTML button element (<button> tag) in conjunction with CSS.  

Today based on the knowledge acquired in the previous article we will build a button-based navigation bar for a fictitious web application. Using the power of CSS and Dreamweaver design tools we will quickly create button rollovers, navigation dropdown menus with a search-box and navigation sub-items.

We will also apply two “skins” –two Cascading Stylesheet files to control the appearance of our navigation bar. While working on the design we will aim for a desktop-based application type of a look. The first skin will apply the classic Windows 98 style, while the second one will have a modern Microsoft Office XP theme.

As a result of this exercise we will build an interface similar to the screenshots below:

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An Audio/Video messaging application with Flash MX 2004 & Flash Communication Server-Part 2

Table of Contents:

  • Introduction
  • A summary from the previous article
  • Sending the E-mail – Working with Flash
  • Sending the E-mail – Working with PHP
  • Displaying the received message to receiver – Working with Flash
  • Displaying the received message to receiver – Working with PHP
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

In 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.

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Quotes, Citation and CSS

Everybody likes a good quote, whether it be a monologue from Hamlet or a particularly pithy piece of your own work.

From a design point of view, quotes are a handy for breaking up your web content and highlighting useful parts of our document. They are essential for any webpage that is using material quoted from elsewhere, such as a weblog. Fortunately (X)HTML provides a number of tags to help mark-up our quoted content correctly.

In this tutorial we're going to look at quotes, and how you can use the correct markup for them in (X)HTML, and how you can style this markup with CSS so that it's semantically valid AND nice to look at.

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Working with the Event Listener

When the DOM came into prominence and DHTML became a viable web technology we seemed to gain a lot of new tools. The great thing about a lot of the new tools is that they are very useful. The downside is that some of them force you to delve a little deeper into JavaScript and maybe learn something new. In other words, you have to step outside your comfort zone. Trust me, this is a good thing!

The event listener was added when the W3C event model was introduced. But first let’s make sure we know what an event is – what indeed is an event? Someone once said “without events there are no scripts” and that is pretty much correct. Take a look at your scripts and HTML pages and you’ll notice that in order to run your functions, you are triggering them via events.

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From the Ground Up: How to Build Online Revenue part 3

In the previous article, I reported that U.S. citizens spent $1.8 billion for online content in 2004. and that an average of only 31.4% of Internet users surf the computer on a daily basis. If the two statistics are combined, it appears that only a few folks in America hold the cash and that a Web site owner only has a few minutes each day to capture their attention and/or money. This week I’ll compare these statistics to illustrate how a company can use bias to make claims that alter marketing strategies. In addition, I’ll continue with an examination of Paul Stamet’s Web site to determine how a small company can use this material to absorb a niche market.

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Drawing in Flash with ActionScript

You’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.

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Exploring the power of Photoshop CS2

A new version of Photoshop and ImageReady means another upgrade and a decision of when to purchase or if you should even bother. Depending on your needs, you may find just a few gems in the new Photoshop CS2 or you may consider the dozens of enhancements life savers. I’ve found myself somewhere in the middle, amazed at how many truly useful innovations Adobe has crammed into this version while still maintaining the familiar interface we’ve all come to know.

Because this is a site for web professionals, I will be concentrating on tools that will be useful to the average web designer. First, some interesting decisions on the part of Adobe. While Photoshop and ImageReady continue on as separate entities, their capabilities now overlap more than ever. For instance, Photoshop has had the ability to slice and optimize images for the web using Save for Web, but now they even include the GIF animation palette right in Photoshop. What’s left in ImageReady? You can still slice, optimize and animate in ImageReady and it is the only place to create Image Maps and Rollovers. It also provides some features Photoshop doesn’t match for optimizing, slicing and tweaking the HTML and Javascript that is generated.

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Online Marketing Strategies part 2: How to Utilize Survey Results

In the previous article, I explained how the Online Publisher’s Association (OPA) segmented the Internet into four categories – content, communication, commerce, and search. They then broke the content category down into eleven divisions where an Internet site could pull in revenue. In this article, I’ll dissect Paul Stamet’s Fungi Perfecti site to compare against the content list that OPA developed. Additionally, I’ll lead you to some further statistics that might help you gain a leg up on your own marketing ladder.

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Modifying Page Elements On-the-fly

In the “old days” web developers did everything – and I mean everything – in the local page, right in the code. That meant presentational tags all the way down to JavaScript functions spread throughout the page. We soon found out that was the wrong way to do things. Maintenance is a nightmare and consistency throughout becomes non-existent. Even worse, errors easily worked their way into such a development strategy.

In recent times, we’ve seen the introduction of XHTML and CSS to control the presentation of web pages. It now seems that almost everyone recognizes the benefits of separating presentation code from the content itself. Now developers are realizing that the same benefits can be had with the “behaviour” layer – the JavaScript layer.

In other words, we can do more than just link our JavaScript files instead of putting them locally in the page. What we can do is begin to remove all the function calls and bits and pieces of JavaScript from our pages and instead move the control to the functions themselves. This separates our code layers even further and makes our JavaScript easier to maintain and more powerful.

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