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Archive for June, 2007
Friday, June 29th, 2007
Hey all…I know you people are busy with creating your flash movies, and I must say you guys rock! Look at the Toufee movie gallery, my goodness, you people are doing awesome work with your flash videos that leaves us with more responsibility to create new cutting-edge flash animation effects (You’ll soon find a whole bunch of new flash effects in the upcoming Toufee 2.0 version).
Looking at the amazing flash videos that you people are doing, I just wanted to help you guys with a tip that you might find handy when creating your Toufee flash presentations. The first tip that we are going to see today deals with posting Toufee flash movies onto your personal websites. I am sure most of you would have already posted the flash videos to your site and the Toufee flash movie open inside within your webpage…fine, not a problem, but what if you wanted the same Toufee movie to open in a custom popup window when someone clicks a link on your page? Here is how you do it - follow the steps below
Step 1: Open up your webpage and with it the HTML code (If you are having a blog or using an online Page Builder for your website, editing your webpage is easy, you login with your account details and you are provided with the option to edit the webpage and its HTML code).
Step 2: Paste the following code between the <HEAD> section of your HTML script.
<script>
function fullMovie(mid) {
var l = Math.round( ( screen.width-550 ) / 2 );
var t = Math.round( ( screen.height-270 ) / 2 );
wx = window.open(’
http://www.toufee.com/cgi-bin/mymovie.pl?fType=frameless&u=’+mid, ‘movie’,
‘width=550,height=270,resizable,left=’+l+’,top=’+t);
setTimeout(”checkPopup()”, 1000);
}
</script>
Make sure you paste the above code in the <HEAD> section. This is the JavaScript code that creates a new popup window and loads your Toufee movie into that
Step 3: OK, we have the code to create a custom window. How do you invoke the JavaScript? I can hear you shout…once you’ve done pasting the JavaScript, copy the code below and paste it in the <BODY> section of your HTML page
<a href=”javascript:void(1)” onclick=”fullMovie(’$MID‘)”>Click to Open my Toufee Movie</a>
People, watch close…you need to change $MID in the above code with your Toufee Flash Movie ID. Toufee generates a unique numerical ID for each of your Toufee flash movie. This is how Toufee identifies your movie from millions of flash movies in the Toufee directory. You can find your Toufee Movie ID by clicking on Publish button in the Toufee Movie Editor. In the window that opens up, click “Finish Publishing” button. This opens up another screen where it says “Your Permanent URL: http://flash-movies.toufee.com/mov/561178550521″. The number in this URL is your movie ID (the number that you see here is the ID of my Toufee movie, you will get a different number as your ID). Copy this and replace it in place of $MID. Remember to remove the $ sign.
Step 4: If you’re done with the above, save your HTML page and reopen. You now get a link called “Click to open my Toufee Movie” (You can change the link text to any text you wish…change the link text in the code in Step 3) which on clicking opens your Toufee Movie in a customized popup window.
Hope you find this useful. If you face any difficult in getting this to work, email me at ganesh@toufee.com and I will make sure you get it to work.
Thanks
Ganesh
Toufee Support
Posted in Toufee Tips | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007
Its been quite some time since I wrote the last blog post…I was looking to write on something useful, but the truth is, I could not come up with anything. Fed up with nothing to do, I hit the Internet. There was this old email that I forgot for so long that it took the hell out of me to clear the huge junk in my Inbox…I was doomed , no more emails I said to myself.
I was browsing numerous sites, mostly related to Flash animations when I came across this link where Toufee flash movie maker was used by Quentin D’Souza to create a courseware material for his weekend presentation at KnowSchools. Quite suprisingly, a number of educators have been using Toufee to develop educational material for their subjects and even using flash movies created with Toufee to present at workshops and educational seminars. Impressive isn’t it? When we created Toufee, we never thought of this possibility of using Toufee towards educational stuff. But looking at the response we’ve been getting from high school teachers to educational administrators, Toufee sports an ideal fit for educational applications.
Why Toufee for developing online couresware?
When you start using Toufee, you’ll definitely know why. An online courseware application, as the name suggests, needs to be available 24×7 on the Internet so that it can be accessed by students from anywhere anytime. You need to dedicate a website that will host the courseware and this requires a domain as well as lots of space if you need to make available huge courseware or flash tutorials. This would burn your pocket as you need to shell out extra dollars for each MB from your hosting solution provider. Toufee solves all these problems for free and this has caught the instant attention of educators and educational administrators worldwide! Toufee movie maker is fully hosted online, and provides you all the space for your flash movies (i.e. the flash-based courseware) and comes completely free. Toufee movie maker has all the essential tools, features and effects required to create perfect couresware applications and online flash tutorials. Toufee flash presentations are much smaller than conventional flash movies which means your courseware becomes smaller - students across the globe find it faster to download and view. Toufee flash movies can be posted onto any webpage, so you can post the courseware on your school website or your personal University webpage.
We would love to hear if anyone of you had already used Toufee to create educational coursewares or flash-based tutorials. If so, we would be delighted to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how to improve the tool to facilitate better features geared towards such needs. Also, it would be nice if you could share your flash couresware or tutorials that you did with Toufee. If you are a teacher or an administrator from the educational field and would like to know more about how Toufee can help you build online courseware you can email us at help@toufee.com and we would be delighted to help you in that regard.
Cheers
Ganesh
Toufee Support
Posted in Toufee Tips | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
Did you that the Toufee flash movies that you create can help you get found when Google searches for similar phrases from its database? If you’re famous, Google naturally finds you. If aren’t and you don’t have any reference about you on the Internet and still want to be on Google Search list, worry not, there is still hope. You can become an instant hit with Google with help from your Toufee movies. Hard to believe? Its as simple as this, create a flash movie (a really good one, but hey please sign up before you can create flash videos), and if its good then Toufee users start viewing it, your flash movie gets recognized not only within the Toufee community but also by Google, the search gaint.
Here is a live example. If you had read my previous blog post, you would know about the Toufee flash movie “The Ultimate Yes” created by our user Lisa. Now go to Google, and search for the keywords “The Ultimate Yes”. Scroll down the search results page and see the whats the 8th result - its the “The Ultimate Yes” Toufee movie that Lisa had created. Isn’t this super cool? If you look closely, Google would have returned 25 million search results for the search phrase “The Ultimate Movie” but Google puts Toufee flash movie at the top of the search list. Thats how popular Toufee is and if your flash movies are popular within the Toufee community Google will definitely recognize you and your movie as something important. So what are you waiting for? Go on and create your Toufee flash movie - it can be a simple flash presentation or a flash music video but make sure you create a hell of a movie! (Don’t worry if you don’t know how to make your flash movie. Once you sign-up and login, you’ll find links to tutorials about creating flash videos and also high-quality flash video tutorials). The better your movie, more the chances of it getting viewed by Toufee users which increases your chances of Google finding you!
Posted in Toufee Tips | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007
Toufee can be applied to create flash animations for a variety of reasons - it can be a business presentation, a flash banner ad, as Splash screens for your websites, for flash-based advertising campaigns, what not? But there is one application that seamlessly fits for Toufee - its those inspirational flash movies. You would have seen thousands of such movies floating around the internet. I myself get inspirational flash videos to my email very often. So is Toufee simply about creating inspirational flash movies? Not exactly. Toufee, being a powerful online flash movie maker can take this one step further - with Toufee’s powerful integration with social networking sites like MySpace, Yahoo 360, Hi5 etc., you take your inspirational messages to a wider audience.
When we say Toufee is ideal for creating inspirational flash movies, we do not mean you should do them for the sake of doing it. Your flash presentation can act as a goodwill campaign to spread a social cause- your Toufee movie can be on Tsunami victims, child malnutrition in Africa, war and its effects on civilians, I can go on but the important thing is the insipiration, the desire to convey something in a powerful yet touching manner. What led me to write this post? You would have noticed that in the last few posts I’ve have been mostly doing articles on Toufee’s feature and flash-related stuff and out of the blue I come up with this article asking you to do inspirational flash movies? The real fact is that I had this chance to look at one of the movies that Lisa created using Toufee. You can see the movie (its called “The Ultimate Yes”. It deserves a thumbs up!) below:
Open up the movie and you know what I mean (btw, don’t forget to turn on the volume, the movie has a nice background piece that jells beautifully). The movie scores highly for two things - a) for the message b) professionalism (Lisa has planned the Pictures, texts and effects well in advance and executed that to perfection). Inspirational flash movies of such quality can really make a difference when delivered to the target audience. All you need is proper planning - plan the sequence (storyboard), pick the right pictures, write the scripts and most importantly dont overdo the effects (Lisa’s movie is an excellent example of how to apply effects for inspirational flash movies) and when you finally created your masterpiece, don’t forget to post the link to your movie (post the links here using comments) so that Toufee users get to see it
Ganesh
Toufee Support
P.S. If you like the above movie, do make sure to check out Lisa’s Blog too!
Posted in Movie Maker | 4 Comments »
Friday, June 15th, 2007
 If you’re some sort of seller in eBay, then here’s your chance to woo your customers and generate more sales from your eBay store. Firstly, a change of wardrobe be in order - you need to flavor up your About page in eBay store if at all you want to be remembered by buyers. For that, just adding plain text won’t do good. You need interactive content - like a Flash presentation that’s not too big but does the same thing what loads of paragraph would do. That said, creating a flash presentation is not easy as typing a paragraph, but worry not, there’s Toufee to the rescue. We all know (atleast those who read this blog) Toufee free flash movie maker can help create engaging flash movies easily and quickly, but there’s more to it - you can create flash movies for eBay in seconds. Toufee flash movies for eBay not only improves your visibility as a seller, but also showcases your professional approach towards your sales through eBay stores. A professionally made flash presentation remarkably improves your chances of getting noticed amidst scores of eBay sellers. Go to Toufee’s main webpage (http://www.toufee.com) and at the left hand bottom corner, under the section called “New Stuff” is the “eBay Wizard” option that lets you create flash movies for your eBay account instantly.
 Clicking on the eBay Wizard links takes you to the eBay movie creation page where are you provided with the option to create your eBay flash video. Please remember that you need to have a eBay seller account before you can use Toufee to create the flash movie presentation. Enter your eBay ID and click on Make Movie! button. Voila! your flash movie is ready. You’re all set to post the movie to your eBay profile. Click on “View your eBay Movie!” to view the flash movie that Toufee created for you. The flash movie opens in a new page. Copy the link in the title bar and use it in your eBay profile page. If you need to give personal touches to the eBay flash movie just click on “Edit profile in Toufee Editor!” button (you’ll get this option in the immediate page that opens up once you click on “Make Movie!” button) to launch the Toufee editor that opens the eBay flash movie for further editing.
If you have any queries in creating flash video for eBay or have suggestions on how Toufee flash presentations can be used to enhance your sales prospects, leave us a comment or email Toufee support.
Ganesh
Toufee Support
Posted in Toufee Tips | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007
Is it wise to spend your time on online flash movie makers when you can do the same flash videos on the heavyweight applications sitting on your Desktop? The answer - yes and no. If we say we made Toufee to capture the market for Flash software then we would be making a fool of ourselves. So how does an online flash movie maker help? Does it really help? Yes. It does. From an investment perspective (we do not only mean money), web based free movie makers can rapidly speed up your decision making - you’re no longer left comparing software from different vendors, comparing features, the trial conditions and price. With a free flash movie maker, you start creating your flash presentations right away - its business right from the word go. It doesn’t mean you should shun your existing flash software or cancel your future investments in flash software. So whats the investment perspective that we’re talking about? What’s the catch about creating your flash movies using online free flash movie makers? It’s about a)gains and b)gains in a big way. If you can achieve an end product from an online flash movie maker like Toufee similar to what a desktop software could do then that is what we call “gaining in a big way” How? Since you cut down on time, effort and money; you stand to gain time, effort and money. This is sometimes what we call the double-effect - you inputs are beneficial (there’s less effort) and you get more output. You can call this your return on investment or whatever you like.
The best way to get maximum ROI from online flash movie makers depends on how well you perfect your decisions. If you need to deliver a quick flash movie project, an online movie maker can provide better ROI. That doesn’t mean doing bigger flash animations in Toufee return less from an investment standpoint - you still can; if your realistic estimates suggest better returns. Ok, what’s the point about talking? Have people really benefited using web-based flash movie makers? Have they managed to achieve real ROI? Yes, they have and we keep getting mails about that - its what Toufee is all about.
If you feel Toufee has really helped your flash presentations or helped achieved the ROI that we’ve been talking about, please leave a comment, its your messages that keep us going. Btw, it would be great if you could share how you managed to achieve better ROI using Toufee.
Till next time
Ganesh
Toufee Support
Posted in Movie Maker | 4 Comments »
Monday, June 11th, 2007
Toufee has powerful options that extends the already available effects and settings that you find with the standard Toufee interface. This feature gives you more control over your flash movie. Toufee’s optimizer option is available when you click on “Optimize” button at the top right corner of the Toufee interface. Follow these steps to bring up the optimization options.
- Click on the”Optimize” button in the top right of your Toufee interface
- The “Optimize Your Movie” window opens
- The “Optimize Your Movie” window has 5 tabs namely Background, Sound, Frame Effects, Tags and Advanced. You’ll find a number of useful options under these tabs
Editing the Width and Height of your Toufee Movie
 The default size of a Toufee movie is 550×270 pixels. However, this setting might not be suitable if you are doing Flash advertisment banners or Flash presentations that require custom Height and Width settings. Toufee allows you to change the default Height and Width settings using the “Optimize Your Movie” window (the steps to open this window are mentioned above). Once in “Optimize Your Movie” window, select Advanced tab. Here you’ll have the option to change the Height and Width settings.
Note: Plan your flash movie in advance - Change the Height and Width settings FIRST before you starting working on the movie.
Add Tags to your Flash Movie
 Tags are keywords that helps in easily locating objects when people search for it. Whenever you create a movie and share it. All flash movies that you create in Toufee gets added to the Toufee movie directory (Its a common repository where all movies created by Toufee users can be accessed). Adding tags or keywords to your Toufee movie can easily make your movie getting identified when users search with keywords that match with those of your tags that you added to your movie. You can add tags to your Toufee movie using the “Optimize Your Movie” window (The procedure to open the window is mentioned above). Once the window is open, select Tags tab. Here you will find three textboxes namely Movie Name, Title and Tags. Give an appropriate movie name and title. In the tags enter as many keywords as possible (seperated by comma) that best describes your movie. Click Update button once done.
Toufee’s “Optimize Your Movie” window boasts of powerful features that you can tweak to enhance your flash movie. You can explore the various options and see for yourself what difference it makes to your flash presentations. I will also post additional articles on some of the other features that you can achieve using the Optimize Window.
Stay tuned.
Ganesh
Toufee Support
Posted in Toufee Tips | No Comments »
Friday, June 8th, 2007
The normal flash movies that you see on websites, use a small software component called the Flash plugin. This Flash plugin comes along with your browsers (IE, Firefox, Netscape etc) but you can also manually install it by downloading it from Adobe site. This Flash plugin is responsible for playing the flash movies and flash videos that you see on all flash-enabled websites. In a normal website with Flash content, though its not directly possible to save those Flash videos, there are lots of workaround you can do to save a Flash movie that you see on a website (In Firefox, saving Flash content is relatively easier than IE. In Firefox, open a webpage with Flash animations, right-click anywhere on the page and select “View Page Info” from the popup menu. This opens the “Page Info” Dialog box. Select “Media” tab. Firefox lists all the media files (images, sounds, videos) that’s prsent on the webpage. The flash movies will be listed under Embed type with .SWF extension. Click on “Save As…” button to save the flash movie. Isn’t that cool???) . You can do the same stuff in IE using IE plugins like “Flash Saving Plugin 1.2″, Aevita Save Flash, etc.
This option to save Flash content from websites is great, but assume that you’re developing a paid courseware service in Flash and hosting it on your site. Imagine if users save your Flash content? Imagine they distribute it illegally over the internet? You lose your customers as well as your revenues. Keeping this in mind, we developed Toufee Movie Maker flashbox technology, which is a small layer of software that automatically loads when a webpage with Toufee movie is loaded. Instead of the Flash plugin, Toufee Movie Maker flashbox takes control of the Toufee movie (remember Toufee movies are also Flash movies but are optimized for enhanced security and faster downloads). Toufee’s flashbox still uses the same Adobe Flash plugin to play the Toufee movies, but conceals the flash movie content such that Firefox and IE plugins cannot recognize it. Toufee’s flashbox adds the important security feature to your Flash movies such that it cannot be saved. We are also developing additional features into this flashbox to support what we call “permission-based playing” that allows you to control what your target audience can/cannot view. Toufee’s flashbox is a great tool if you are developing commercial content delivery using Flash technology. Toufee Movie Maker’s flashbox technology provides you enhanced security as well as the flexibility to control content delivery. You can verify if it works by opening your Toufee movie in Firefox and check the “Media” section to see if it displays any flash (.SWF) files - it won’t - your Flash movies are secured by Toufee.
Ganesh
Toufee Support
Posted in Flash Tips | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
I’ll be making a fool of myself if I repeat here in this post what Toufee is for, but this post is still about those things what Toufee can be used for - and how differently!
- Create a website Have I gone crazy? Can you build a website using Toufee? Well, to start with you can building a simple Toufee-based site, and technically each frame becomes a page (ideal for personal websites with less number of pages). If you are convinced by this idea, you can burn the rubber a bit more and try doing navigation links, content body as seperate Toufee movies (Honestly, this is too much exaggeration, pardon me…)
- Spice up your videos If you have band, wont it be cool if you can add a bit of glamour to your videos? You can add an intro section, subtitle your song (excuse me, how do you do that using Toufee? The answer - I don’t know, you’ve got to figure it out
 ) and a credits section at the end of your video. Doesn’t your song look cool now? No? You’re not convinced ? ok then, I’ll pass this one 
- Your personalised greeting card maker Some users would have already figured this out. For those who haven’t, here’s the truth - Toufee can be a great tool to make your own animated greeting. The messages, pictures, the effects - its all yours. Its better than those ready-to-email cards and definitely better if you wish to get your girlfriend’s attention (a word of caution…you’ll get more attention if you mess it up!)
Btw, I am no expert at these things, I am just putting my thoughts together to see if it makes sense - if it doesn’t you can always leave a comment. Oouch…I am already starting to hear a few
Till next time,
Ganesh
Toufee Support
Posted in Toufee Tips | 3 Comments »
Monday, June 4th, 2007
The team at Toufee is overwhelmed by the amount of support that we’ve been getting from Toufee users through email and through blog comments. We’re happy to note that users take time to leave us a note. So we decided to use this blog better - we would like to hear more from you. Do you have any suggestions for Toufee? Would you like to suggest a feature to be added to Toufee? Is there any issue that you have been bugged with? This blog is an ideal place to share. Leave your notes as comments and we’ll be glad enough to take them. We think the blog becomes much more interactive this way. Btw, that doesn’t mean you should not email your queries to Toufee Support. Honestly, Toufee Support should always be your first priority if you have issues to tell about. This blog essentially provides you news on Toufee and articles related to it, but we felt it will be more fun and informative if we can have your comments through this blog as that would mean eveyone can have a look at what other Toufee users have to suggest. This way, it helps streamline user feedback.
As an ardent Toufee fan myself, I have a few suggestions listed below to start with
Toufee Forum - What about a forum that Toufee users can use to share their experiences - Did you end up doing a wonderful movie? Was there a feature that you used differently to get a whole new effect? There is so much to share and a forum would be a great place to start
Toufee Poll - How about a poll that we can use to vote the top feature to be added? What about voting your favorite Toufee movie or the top things that people use Toufee for
Some of my thoughts, its time now that we hear what you think
Best Regards
Ganesh
Toufee Support
Posted in Toufee Moments | 2 Comments »
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