The word flash has always been synonymous with lightning and thundering and the advent of flash movies has brought a similar revolution in the cyber world. Flash movies have gained an immense popularity among web designers and the public equally. Why? Flash software enables you to create animations alongside interactive content and this feature creates a movie like feeling for the viewers.

Flash is an application that works on a multilevel platform. It is consistent across all platforms and browsers and any movie created in Flash will appear the same on all browsers and platforms - all that is required is the correct plug-in, which is really not a Herculean task. If the plug-in is not in built with the browser, it can be downloaded for free.

There are many advantages in using Flash. Flash is a wonderful tool to add games, animations and video to your website. Flash movies are relatively smaller files when compared to GiF formats and other video versions. It also offers a plethora of colors, blending options, and opacity levels with smooth animations and accurate typography.

Now let’s say you want to create a website and you need a demo or a tutorial to be placed in it. You have three options….. the first is to give it only in text, the second is through visual only I.e. only visuals and videos and the third …is a tactful handling of visual and text and that is where Flash helps. Flash movies help you to create a site where you can explore options for effectively combining text and videos. This helps to give various options not only to you but also to your viewers. If used judiciously, Flash you would give the viewers a platform to read, view, observe, hear and understand and that’s what we want, right?

A web designer always wants his website to be interactive and unique to gain an edge over competitors. Flash movies enables them to do this through features that allow them to add attractive text, draw graphics, and create special effects and much more. In short, using a Flash maker you as a site owner can speak to your audience and make that best impression on them. They help to catch audience attention in a quick way that cannot be seen in other kinds of media communications. In order to gain the full benefits of using Flash software all that is needed is harnessing its rich graphics and powerful programming features.

However as with everything  ”Excess of anything is harmful.” So avoid getting tempted to use too much of Flash or use Flash where it’s not needed. Why?

Flash takes a lot of space, hence it takes time to load a website with lot of Flash elements. So when using Flash movies, use it appropriately and meaningfully. Think of using it, like using images in a book - there has to be a balance between the text element and visual elements. They should compliment each other.

At the end the choice is at your discretion. However, it is advisable to use Flash as a part of your website rather than cluttering it up with it. So all the web designers out there- Do flash, but Flash in style!!!

So while flash movies can be great for your website, to create flash movies you need to learn actionscripting and programming. Fortunately, now there is a way by which flash has been made be easy… so average people like you and me can also make flash movies for our websites - and without spending a fortune on expensive flash makers Or months in learning all this technical Flash mumbo-jumbo first…

So while all the “Industry Experts” said it “could never” be done…

We Out of Pure Frustration, researched and reached out to the Greatest Programmers to Build “The Ultimate Flash Maker.” A flash maker that can create flash movies without any programming! And we did it!

Proudly presenting to you:

http://www.toufee.com/

The Easiest and Fastest Flash Movie Maker Online!

If you know how to use a mouse… you can create flash movies with Toufee’s Flash Maker.

P.S. We are currently having a 14 day free trial going on Toufee.com, so you can check out our flash maker without actually buying anything!

Toufee has launched a new licensing program that allows educational institutions access its online flash movie maker software. With the new licensing, academic institutions can use Toufee for interactive learning and for developing learning content.

Toufee, the online flash movie maker application has come up with a new licensing program that will allow educational institutions to have access to the Toufee flash movie maker application. Under the new licensing program, academic institutions can signup for bulk licenses at a highly subsided pricing. Called the Toufee Academic Account, this new account licensing will allow use of all basic features of Toufee flash movie maker application that will allow educators and students to use Toufee to create flash movies quickly and easily.

“The Toufee Academic Account provides academic institutions with bulk licenses at discounted rates so that every educator/student in the institution can have individual Toufee user accounts. We already have a number of independent tutors and educators using Toufee for activity-based learning and the Toufee Academic Account is great news for institutions as this will allow educators to use Toufee’s technology for interactive classroom learning in a much bigger way” said Sanchit Bhatnagar, co-founder and Director of Toufee at the launch of the Academic Account.

The Academic Account comes with all the features of a Standard Account, however, there will be no support for YouTube nor does the Academic Account allow flash movies to be exported to SWF files. Though product support will not be available, a separate forum will be made available for educators and students to post questions and access answered queries. In addition, users of Toufee Academic Account will however have full access to Toufee tutorials and Toufee’s Knowledge Base.

“The Toufee Academic Account is in line with Toufee’s continued commitment towards empowering education through our interactive and cutting-edge flash-based products” says Navneet Rai, co-founder and Director of Toufee. All academic institutions in the United States and other countries are eligible to apply for the Toufee Academic Account. The Toufee Academic Account cannot be used for commercial interests and all flash content created with the academic Account are limited to educational use only.

In today’s highly competitive and fast paced environment of online marketing and website promotion, everyone needs to market and advertise their websites in order to reach the right target customers. Flash banners are one of the best marketing tools available for this purpose. A flash banner is a new form of online advertising which is quickly replacing traditional marketing method. Flash banners are designed to attract visitors to the advertiser’s website, thus increasing exposure of the website. Flash banners are embedded in various websites, just like billboards that we can see on high-rise buildings or television advertisements that we see in between our favorite shows. Flash banners are popular amongst giant websites, such as Microsoft and Nokia.Traditionally banners have been created using GIF files. But Flash banners have been proven to return better results than animated gifs, especially in displaying advertisements. Flash banners are generally smaller and they can be used to show videos and sounds. This certainly improves the visibility of the flash banners, since they are more animated and more attractive than static banners. These eye-catching banners can also be designed to include interactive functions that allow viewers to do various things such as clicking and even typing text on them. Certain things are better explained using images and animated words. Diagrams, flow charts and other types of charts are delivered better using flash banners than using plain text.

Website owners who wish to use flash banner in their websites should not use stock flash banners. It is better if you design your own flash banners because other people might be using the same design and your flash banner will not be special. By designing your own flash banners, you are free to use whichever image, video or audio files you like. Customization is unlimited to only your creativity and imagination. Use your own company or website logo, put your own images and sounds, and reach your target audience. Furthermore, you will be able to create a unique, one-of-a-kind flash banner. The message is conveyed accurately when you design your own banner and you can control the size so that it will not be too heavy and slow down the website.

To create flash banners, one is usually required to have some knowledge of ActionScript. However, nowadays there are more options of applications that can be used to create flash banners by just using a mouse. Whichever application you choose, be sure to create flash banners that are not too large in size, as most websites require flash banners to be within certain limits, before you are allowed to advertise at their websites. Also always remember that flash offers a considerable advantage over the animated gif banners because of the reasons just mentioned, so it only makes sense that you use flash banners for your advertising. Remember that attractiveness plays a huge role in catching the attention of visitors to your website. The more eye-catching your flash banners are, the more visitors will click on your advertisements and as a result, you will get more traffic from potential customers.

To cut a long story short, we have designed “the ultimate flash banner maker” so average people like you and me can also make flash banners for our business - but without spending a fortune on expensive software Or months in learning all this technical Flash mumbo-jumbo first…

http://www.toufee.com

Sanchit Bhatnagar,
CEO - http://www.Toufee.com
~Create flash banners in under a minute~

With so many millions of websites on the internet, after a while, they all start to look the same. If you want your website to stand out from the masses, you should strongly consider a Flash website. Flash websites are used by the most modern companies on the cutting edge of the industry. All of the big names in the industry use Flash now. It’s almost a requirement if you’re going to compete in the business world. Some of the biggest brands in the world like Nokia, Nike, Volkswagen, and Adidas all use Flash. With so many people utilizing this technology for their web design, shouldn’t you strongly consider it for yours? One of the oldest methods in the book to becoming successful is to follow those that are also successful.

Flash offers a lot of benefits for your website. The biggest thing that it provides you is the ability to catch someone’s attention. Let’s face it…you’ve only got a couple of seconds to get a prospect’s attention. If you fail to do so, they’ll just move on to something else. Someone else that sells the same product as you will end up capturing their attention. In this business it’s all about attention-getting strategies. If you get their attention right off of the bat, you can pull them into your website. They’ll want to see more and learn more about you and your products. The longer that someone spends looking at your website, the more likely they are to buy something from you. Without sales, your business will go under pretty quickly. Anything that you can do to keep people on your site longer is essential to your success.

A Flash website will also give your website a unique look that you won’t get anywhere else. The last thing you want is for your site to look like a standard, cookie-cutter format. Those types of sites don’t evoke any emotion from visitors. When you can get others emotions involved, you have a much better chance at making them your customer.

With all of these obvious benefits, you should undoubtedly implement a Flash website for your business. It can be the difference between a mediocre website and a great one. This could be the difference between a few sales and an abundance of sales.

While Flash is obviously a great thing, you shouldn’t overdo it. If you have a Flash intro, you should always put a link to skip it in plain sight. The worst thing for a customer is not being able to skip over your Flash intro if they frequently visit the site. After a few times of seeing this, they’ll start to just avoid your site all together. You should use Flash with moderation on your site. Otherwise you might start to annoy people. Some classical elements should still be utilized throughout your site as well.

Overall, Flash is a great tool for your web design. If used correctly, it can put your website over the top. It might be the exact thing that you’ve been looking for to complete your online business.

To cut a long story short, we wanted to make flash easy… so average people like you and me can also make flash websites for our business - but without spending a fortune on expensive software Or months in learning all this technical Flash mumbo-jumbo first…

But all the “Industry Experts” said it “could never” be done…

So Out of Pure Frustration, we researched and reached out to the Greatest Programmers to Build “The Ultimate Flash Maker.”

http://www.toufee.com/

The Easiest and Fastest Flash Movie Maker Online

Plus you’ll receive 175 Free Flash Plugins For Trying!

If you know how to use a mouse… you can create Flash with Toufee.com …Period!

I am sure most of you would have noticed that we’ve updated Toufee website. The Members page, i.e. the first page that you see after login, has also undergone a major overhaul in design and strategy. The new Members Home UI is more focused meaning it will let you quickly get on with functions that are used frequently. This tutorial quickly introduces you to the new UI of Members Homepage.

Members Home: The new UI
The new Members Homepage is now divided into major section - Create a New Project and Open a Recent Project

 Create a New Project: This is where you go to get started with a new movie. To create a new movie project, click on the Blank Project (the large moviemaker picture) to open the Toufee MovieMaker window.

Open a Recent Project: This section lists all your Toufee Pro movies (Please note that this section will only list your Toufee Pro movies and not your Toufee Classic movies (if you had previously used Toufee Classic). All paid subscribers with an active Business Account will continue to have access to all their Toufee Classic movies via the Toufee Classic link at the top of the homepage).
This section lists all your movies horizontally (like the Pictures folder in your Windows), so if you want to quickly search for a particular movie, enter the name (partial text will do) of the movie in the Search Projects textbox and click Go. Toufee will now list those movies that match the search criteria. When after a search, you wish to display all your movies, click on the Show All Projects link and Toufee will revert back to displaying all your existing Toufee Pro movies.

The Left Panel

You’ll now notice that the left part of your new UI has the Blog and the Getting Started sections to assist you in your movie making. After a lot of thought and design changes, we identified the Blog and the Getting Started to be of vital importance to assist users in their movie making and provides quick updates of new features/announcements and tutorials. These are also the two sections that are frequently updated by us and hence it made sense to put these directly on the Members Home

Blog: This section lists the most recent articles from Toufee’s Blog, the official source of information for all new updates related to Toufee Movie Maker. Toufee Blog provides the latest updates on Toufee MovieMaker, information on new features, preview of new enhancements, how-to articles on new features and general announcements.

The Blog also provides tips on effective movie-making and guest columns by Toufee users and experienced flash authors. To read an article, click on the article link and you’ll be redirected to that article on Toufee Blog. If you have a RSS reader installed on your PC, then you can subscribe to Toufee Blog by clicking on the RSS Updates link to stay up-to-date with all the new posts that happens on Toufee Blog.

Getting Started: This is where you access all the Video Tutorials and the Step-by-Step Tutorials. We’ve made it such a way that all new tutorials are listed here, so you can be rest assured you don’t miss those easy-to-understand video tutorials. Clicking any tutorial will take you straight to the Tutorials page.

Searching the KnowledgBase:Toufee’s KnowledgeBase is your gateway to all your answers related to anything on Toufee. Toufee’s KnowledgeBase contains FAQs on all topics related to Toufee. You can quickly search the knowledgeBase by typing in a keyword in the KnowledgeBase search textbox and clicking on Go

Additional Links
As you see in the previous screenshot, we’ve also added few quick links on the top right of the screen to make navigation easier. The Get Started redirects you to the Tutorials page and the Help link takes you to the Support Desk Homepage from where you can access all documentation, FAQs and Toufee tutorials and also view/post support tickets to the Toufee Support Desk. The Logout link logs out of the Members Home.

About this Tutorial
This tutorial introduces you to one of the advanced features of Toufee Pro and the most important feature of frames - controlling the frame timing. Frames form the building block of a Toufee movie and knowing how to set custom timings will help you master the nuances of professional flash movie making.

Before you begin
Make sure you have Left Panel visible. This is turned on by default, however, if for some reason you do not see this, click on the Star icon on the top left of the Movie Maker to show the Left Panel.

The Left Panel is a floating panel, which means it automatically goes out of view back and forth. If you wish to have the Left Panel to be visible always you might want to click on Pin This option. The Left Panel will then be attached to the Movie Maker stage unless you manually put it out of view by clicking on the Star icon (The Star icon works like a toggle button, notice the bevel on the Star icon - this indicates that the Left Panel is visible)

Viewing and Changing Frame Timing
Step 1: Make sure the Left Panel is visible
Step 2: Select a frame by clicking the frame on the filmstrip
Step 3: On the Left Panel, switch to the Advanced tab, and click on Timing (Expert Only)
Step 4: The Frame Length field displays the current timing (in seconds) that the frame is displayed on the screen. By default, a blank frame will have a default length of 1 second. To change the timing, simply enter the value directly into the Frame Length field or click on the up/down arrows to increase/decrease the timing.

Tip: The On Frame End Pause Movie is a useful option that can prove very handy when testing your Toufee movie, i.e. testing upto a particular point or a frame in the movie and not the entire length. When this option is turned on, the movie pauses after the frame, and will need to be manually resumed by clicking the Play button. This is particularly useful in long flash movies which involve lots of text-based data and/or important slides that should not be skipped.

Frame Timing Behavior
As you might have seen the default length of a blank frame is 1 second. However, this rule applies slightly differently for the first frame in a blank or a new movie which by default is set to 5 seconds.

The length of the frame automatically increases as movie objects (such as text, images, audios, videos etc) are added onto it. The Frame Timing or the Frame Length is the total of the timing of all movie objects on that frame. However, you can always reduce or increase the timing from the Timing (Expert Only) option on the Advanced tab.

More on Timing Control
Timing control is an important feature that is made available with Toufee Pro and offers better control over the timing of the movie objects. This tutorial is only an introduction to Frame Timing. In the further tutorials, we will be looking more on controlling timing of movie objects and how this works in co-ordination with frame timings.

Many times, Toufee users are faced with the need to convert their video files from one format to another for easy upload to Toufee Pro. Sometimes users might have encoded the video in a less known codec. So if you ever have a problem uploading your video files to Toufee or problem with your video files not getting detected in Toufee Pro, simply convert the videos to MPEG format using Any Video Converter. This tutorial covers step by step the procedure of converting movies to MPEG.

Download and Install Any Video Converter
Download and install Any Video Converter from the following URL
http://www.any-video-converter.com/any-video-converter.exe

Step 1: Launching Any Video Converter
Click on the Any Video Converter Professional icon on the desktop or select it from the Program Files folder in the Start menu. The Getting Started page opens which quickly lists the steps involved in the conversion. You’ll find that converting with Any Video Converter is a breeze as its one of the most user friendly program that is available.

Step 2: Select the Video file

Click on the Add Video button to browse and select your video. Once you have selected your video, it will be listed in the grid as shown below.

Now select the MPEG II Movie profile from the Profile dropdown list box (see above screenshot). The Profile option is where you select the target format into which you are converting to. If you are converting to a different format, say, WMV, you can select the the same from the Profile dropdown list. Any Video Converter supports most of the formats so you can be rest assured you’ll never run out of options.

Step 3: Starting the conversion process

When you are ready to convert, click on the Encode button. You might get a warning (like the one below) since the evaluation version supports converting upto 3 minutes. Click on Continue to Evaluate button

The conversion process with start and you will see the progress as shown below

Step 4: Completing and verifying the conversion process

Once the conversion is complete, you will see the Completed message in the Status field. Click on the Output Folder button (on the bottom left of the screen) to open the output file and verify by playing it.

As you saw, converting with Any Video Converter is a breeze. You should not find any problems now with uploading or converting videos for use with Toufee. Should you have any further questions, please leave a support ticket as always!

You might have encoutered the “Add Frame Error” when trying to convert  your Toufee flash movies to AVI or MPG or when uploading them to YouTube using Toufee ProConvertor software. This usually indicates not having the latest Desktop Flash Player and the required Flash ActiveX for your browser. We will be soon porting the Toufee Pro Convertor software to a server-based program which means you do not require any software to convert your flash movies to AVI or MPG video, but for the meantime, please use the following updates.

Please install the latest Desktop Flash Player along with the Flash ActiveX plugin by downloading these from the following URLs

http://www.toufee.com/flash/plugin.exe
http://www.toufee.com/flash/activex.exe

Make sure you clear your browser cache before installing the above updates.

Also make sure you have the latest Toufee Pro Convertor which can be downloaded from http://pro.toufee.com/downloads/setup.exe

Toufee Pro flash movies can be used to make great Autorun CDs which can be used for a variety of applications like custom-made birthday CD specially for a friend, a corporate flash presentation, video tutorials, etc.

 Step 1: Export your flash movies to SWF
This is the most basic step, you have to get your Toufee Pro flash movies from Toufee’s server onto your PC. The step by step procedure of exporting flash movies to SWF has been covered in the following blog post.
http://www.toufee.com/moviemaker/download-toufee-flash-movies-as-swf-files/

Step 2:  Convert your SWF file into an EXE
Autorun files need to be EXE to work. Your SWF flash movie needs to be converted into a self-executable EXE file so that it runs automatically when the CD is loaded without having to launch another program to open it (which is generally the case with a SWF file).There are a number of free utilities that can convert your SWF file to an EXE. One such program called SWF to EXE 3.0 from Brothersoft can be downloaded from this UR
http://www.brothersoft.com/d.php?soft_id=58065&url=http%3A%2F%2Feurotest.chat.ru%2Ffi%2Fswftoexe.zip

Step 3: Create the AUTORUN.INF configuration file
An autorun CD contains the AUTORUN.INF configuration file that contains information on what program needs to be launched when the CD is inserted. The format of the autorun.inf file is as below

[autorun]
OPEN=FlashFile.exe
ICON=Icon.ico

Open a blank Notepad file, type the above lines (replace FlashFile.exe with the name of our flash movie exe file that you just created). The ICON.ico is for if you want the CD drive to display a specific icon file you’ve included, if not leave that line out. Save this file as “Autorun.inf”

Step 4: Burn the files to CD
Copy the flash movie .exe file and the autorun.inf (that you created in the last step) and burn them onto a blank CD. Please make sure that you put both the .exe and .inf files in the root of the CD. Once the data is tranfered, test the CD and your Toufee flash movie should now popup automatically - looks cool isn’t it?