As I have been repeatedly mentioning in the past few blogs, Toufee has been finding great support from teachers and instructors, I couldn’t stop but continue to post some of the suggestions from teachers in this regard.

Emmett King who teaches for School District 99 in Cicero, has been contributing excellent suggestions. As you might be aware from my previous blogs, Emmett has been the first few teachers to realise Toufee’s application in education.
“I want to recommend that Toufee create an Educators Section on the website. The Section will contain a library of movies to play and to review. The movies will have documentation (word or PDF files) as to how the movie was made (step by step) or how 1 or 2 slides were made (step by step). The Section will highlight weekly great movies and instructions. There will be video tutorials that show how a movie was made step by step Teachers will contribute lesson plans as to how to make a particular movie. To implement this plan…………….. I am recommending Toufee create a National Teachers Advisory Board. The Board will make recommendations to the Toufee staff as to how to improve and implement and integrate the product successsfully into a school curriculum. It would be an honor to serve on the Board”

Shelley Owen, Educational Technology Instructor with Rosemont Middle School, Glendale Unified School District is another very popular teacher with Toufee who uses the tool to teach a number of her students. Shelley is also actively involved with introducing Toufee to many teachers. She has this to say
“Many school districts block web sites that allow social networking and sometimes Toufee comes up as a social networking site because you allow unrestricted comments and conversation among users. If you put together an educational version, you might consider making the log-in such that teachers would have to register their classes and give out passwords for a number of students so they don’t have to have their own email accounts (some parents do not allow their kids their own email). Then perhaps we teachers could access/view all our class movies from one site; students would only see the flash movies from their classmates when logged on at school”

Both Emmett and Shelley’s suggestions have valuable points. Emmett suggestion of having a seperate section for teachers to share their experiences with Toufee would serve as a great platform where teachers can really come up with lots of ideas and make teaching more interactive and activity-based which would do wonders to their teaching efforts and make learning an enjoyable affair. Shelley’s suggestion is a great idea which would allow teachers to manage and track student activities in Toufee, and also provides a sense of virtual control over what they do with the tool.

We welcome more teachers who would like to be part of this effort to make Toufee a useful tool for educators and students. We would like to have as many teachers as possbile associated with Toufee and share their knowledge - this would create a great knowledge pool from which all teachers could learn and benefit.

If you have something to say on this post, email me at ganesh@toufee.com or simply leave a comment to this post.

Till next time

Ganesh
Toufee Support

We’ve been receiving hundreds of requests every week for the option to Delete flash movies…if you look at it, it is one of the most simplest of options but Toufee didn’t have the Delete option for a while - sounds weird isn’t it? Well, the reason for that is a pretty interesting story which I will save for a future post but hey, we’ve added the Delete option now…have you noticed?

Once you login to your Toufee account and click on edit, you will be presented with a screen from where you can select your existing projects. Notice this carefully as you now have two new options - Show Preview and Show Advanced Options. Select Show Advanced Options and you will find the Delete This Movie option using which you can delete the flash movie that you no longer require.

Hey there! Its been exciting couple of weeks at Toufee, we have been recieving lots of press coverage from sites like Newswire Today, PR-Inside, i-newswire to name a few. That apart, the overwhelming response that Toufee has been getting from educator is simply awesome! A number of teachers have been using Toufee flash movie maker tool to create interactive learning material for their students. We’ve been hearing from lots of teachers who say that students are more responsive and active when taught through interactive movies using Toufee. We couldn’t be more happier!

As I said we keep getting lots of emails from teachers and technical instructors on how they used Toufee, some of them have been kind enough to share their experiences of using Toufee as a educational software tool. Shelley Owen is an Educational Technology Instructor with Rosemont Middle School, Glendale Unified School District. She has been extensively using Toufee to create flash movies for her middle-school students. Shelley has encouraged her students to use Toufee to create flash movies and this has worked like magic! Toufee helped Shelley’s students discover their creative potential - Shelley has posted some of the Toufee flash movies that her students created at her blog http://shelleyo-learnshare.blogspot.com - Have a look at her blog and you will see some great flash videos done by her students.

Renée Maufroid is another teacher from France who has been using Toufee to prepare activity-based learning material. She has been using Toufee movies to create educational material to great effort. Just look at some of her movies posted here
http://www.quia.com/sh/42315.html
http://www.quia.com/pop/159019.html
http://www.quia.com/rd/59037.html
http://www.quia.com/hm/321488.html

I have a special mention for Emmett King, who teaches for School District 99 in Cicero, Illinois. Emmett was one of the first few teachers to recognize the potential of Toufee’s application in education. Emmett has been working closely with Toufee and has been contributing excellent suggestions in making Toufee more educator and student friendly.

Are you a teacher who has used Toufee in your classroom activities? Do you have something to share with us on how you used Toufee for learning? Please leave your comment here or email me to help@toufee.com. You can showcase your Toufee movies that you or your students did by sending them to help@toufee.com or posting the link of the movie as comment to this post.

Till next time

Ganesh
Toufee Support

Toufee Movie Gallery contains flash movies created by thousands of Toufee users. This is a public flash movie directory so anyone can access it and view your movie. But say you are working on a flash video that is really important and highly confidential - like a flash banner or a flash intro movie for a client you must ensure that your flash movie cannot be accessed by the public until you release to the client. By default, flash movies are shared in the Movie Gallery, so if you wish to keep your movie private limit viewership to your Toufee movie by using the setting in the Publish Your Movie window.

To control the privacy settings of your Toufee movie, follow these steps

1. In the Toufee main editor, on the top right, you will find an option called Publish. Click it. This will open up Publish Your Movie window from where you can change your movie privacy settings.

2. In Publish Your Movie window, under Privacy Options, remove the check mark where it says Share this movie in directory. This will remove your Toufee movie being publicly available or shared in the Toufee Movie Directory

3. Click Finish Publishing button when done

Once you have enabled this setting, only you would know the path of your Toufee movie. If you wish to share the movie, open your Toufee movie (using the movie URL that you get in the Publish window). When the page with your Toufee movie opens, you will find a link called Share This Movie on the right of your movie window. Clicking the link will open up a window where you can enter the email addresses of people with whom you want to share and an email with the link to the movie would be sent to them.

Hope this is useful. If you have any suggestions please leave them as comments to this post. Also, if you have specific topics that you would want me to write about, please let me know.

Ganesh
Toufee Support

This post covers the frequent issues that users face when working with Toufee flash movie maker. As always, you can keep posting your queries to help@toufee.com and you are guaranteed to get your problem resolved. Ok, I’ll start of the with the top-most issue that has been reported by many users lately.

1. Toufee flash movies not showing up
   This could be really irritating. You login to your Toufee account only to find that your existing flash movies list does not load up or the flash movies list show but you couldn’t open your flash movie. The reason for this could be either of the below. If you have been facing this problem try the solution below
   a.) Clear your browser’s temporary files cache
   If you are using Internet Explorer, go to Tools -> Internet Options. In the window that opens, under General tab, select “Delete Cookies” and then “Delete Files“. This will clear all your Internet Cache. If you are using Mozilla FireFox, select Tools - > Clear Private Data… Check all the options and Click “Clear Private Data Now” button
   b.) Reinstall your flash plugin
   If you are using Windows, go to Control Panel, Select Add or Remove Programs. This opens a Window where you will find Adobe Flash Plugin listed. Remove it. Now go the following link to reinstall the Flash Plugin again…
   http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash
2. Toufee flash movies doesn’t autostart
   This is flip-flop option. Some users want to have a button over the movie that starts the movie while others prefer their movie should autoplay. Whichever is your option, the following solution allows for both waysa.) In the Toufee movie editor, click Publish. This will open the Publish Your Movie window.2. Under the “Playback Options“, you will find a checkbox called “Paused at Start“. Remove the check from this option and click on Finish Publishing.Your movie should auto start without any buttons now.
3. Blogger says HTML tags not closed!
   You’ll get this page if you are trying to post your Toufee flash movie onto your blog. Generally, most HTML tags will have a closing tag but that is not always the case. There are some tags that do not require end tags like <EMBED> but unfortunately Google Blogger doesn’t know this The HTML code that you get from the Publish window uses the <EMBED> tag and Blogger may throw an error when you paste the HTML code. What you need to do is use the below code as a template. So when you want to post another Toufee movie next time onto your blog, use the code (adjusted for Google Blogger and other Blogging tools) below instead of the one that you get from Toufee’s Publish window. Only one thing you need to change in the below code every time you post a new movie - replace the movie ID (highlighted in bold) with the movie ID that you get from the Publish window.
   <table>
   <tr>
   <td>
   <embed src=”http://flash-movies.toufee.com/movies/Movie.swf ” loop=”false” menu=”true” quality=”high” scale=”noscale” salign=”lt” bgcolor=”#00ffcc” width=”550″ height=”270″ id=”Movie” name=”Movie” align=”middle” FlashVars=”movieID= 122531183653163&domainName=toufee” allowScriptAccess=”samedomain” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=” http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”></embed>
   </td>
   </tr>
   <td align=right>
   <font size=1 face=verdana color=black>
   <a href=” http://flash-movies.toufee.com/” style=”text-decoration:none” target=”_blank”>
   Create flash movies in minutes at Toufee.com</font>
   </a>
   </td>
   </tr>
   </table>

Hope this is useful. I will post solutions to some other common issues faced with Toufee in the upcoming posts.

Ganesh
Toufee Support

Toufee on Mac is something interesting. We have a fairly good number of users of Toufee coming from the Mac platform and its high time that I write something that can be really useful. Actually, I got a query to Toufee Support on how to make flash presentations made with Toufee to work with iWeb and I though this better get into the blog so that other Mac users would find it helpful.

Before I start, for those of you non-Mac users who are left wondering what iWeb is - iWeb is a website creation tool, very easy, template-driven (you can easily chose from list of website design templates, replace the content with yours and bingo you have your site!) website creation tool that allows any Mac users to create a website in minutes (sounds like Toufee…;) )

Now to the problem - Toufee works like a charm in the Mac platform, you create your flash presentations, your flash movies plays perfectly when you preview, but the problem starts when you want to post the flash video to your personal website that you created with iWeb. iWeb does not directly allow one to edit the HTML code of the webpages - which means if you want to publish your Toufee movie, you copy and paste the HTML code into your webpage done with iWeb. There is a very simple alternative to the problem. Once you finish creating the webpage with iWeb, open the same webpage in a text editor (TextEdit is the standard text editor in Mac, but just about any text editor will do). Once you open your iWeb webpage with a text editor, you are presented with the HTML code. From here on, its one easy ride. Simply paste the Toufee HTML code after the <BODY> section and save the changes. Remember, you need to do this step before you Publish your iWeb webpage…edit your webpage with the text editor, paste the Toufee HTML code, save changes, and finally Publish your webpage that you created.

Hope this would be of some help.

Till next post
Ganesh
Toufee Support

I love the animation movie Cars - the movie has some of the best animation, stunning visual effects and superb attention to detail. My love for the movie doubled when I watched the video of how the movie was made, from conception to the final movie as we see it today. Now if you watch the making of Cars you would know why - these guys are simply amazing, right from the character modeling, storyboarding to visual effects, every bit of the “behind the scenes” stuff was exactly translated into the movie without the least change - perfect as per the plan, not to forget the painstaking detail that would have gone into all the work behind Cars. One moment…why the heck am I writing all this here? Am I not supposed to write something about how to make flash movies? I am, and I will talk about that in just a moment. Talking about the movie Cars, what made it a big success? One can attribute the success to a number of factors - technical brilliance, detail, but if you ask me I would say two things - planning (being clear of what is expected) and personification - I saw each and every toy in the movie as just another person, a character so easily you can identify and associate with. That’s what made the movie special. The makers of Cars gave life to the toys by making it goddamn real and personal!

Ok, so whats my point? The point is a) plan your flash movies b) make it personal…infuse life into your flash videos. Give it that personal touch - sometimes making a flash movie presentation is less of skill and more of an art. Think as if you are creating an art, a masterpiece - you expect nothing but the best. There is a big difference in making a flash movie and making a flash movie that stand out and speaks for itself. Having flashy effects in your movie is cool, but not worth if it doesnt deliver. Even the effects that you use in your flash video decides how well your movie can make that impact. Carefully chosen flash effects coupled with the sound and images can infuse that personal connection between the flash movie and the audience. This is what I mean when I say making a lasting flash presentation.

Never let someone see your movie as just another flash presentation. Your flash movie should make an impact, should drive home your message loud and clear and in a manner unique that will make your movie stand out from the rest.

This is the second post of a series of serious Toufee flash movie tips! I hope my earlier post on custom popup window was useful. This post comes as a direct request from Toufee users, as we’ve been getting lots of emails to Toufee Support on how to use accented text in flash presentations. I am sure all French and Italian friends who use Toufee would have waited for this long - ok, here we go.

There is a workaround that you can use to type accented text inside Toufee textboxes. For example, if you wish to type ä, just press ALT key and enter 132 (ALT + 132). I have given the complete list below

I hope this helps. If the inability of not able to type accented text had kept you from making flash movies, worry not for you now have the cure…what are you waiting for? Go on and rock with your flash videos. By the way, I saw a superb Toufee flash video called Campaign for Love created by Contact (not sure what the real name of this user…his/her profile reads the name as Contact). The link to the movie is

http://www.toufee.com/cgi-bin/user.pl?u=MIAF79881178671918P

Update to the post (Important, please read):

Minutes after I posted this article, I got this excellent addition from San related to this post, He has posted his tip as comment, I am repeating the same here.

“To save the accented chars, you will need to enable Support for Foreign Languages in your Account Settings tab.

Once you do that, new accented fonts will start showing up in your text properties windows.

All accounts are configured for English by default, so when you add support for more languages in your account settings, you will also see many different fonts in the font drop-down too - like French or Brazilian portuguese fonts (for example), etc”