Firstly, a happy Easter to all. There has been query many a times from customers as to the difference between the Flash Banner Creator flash app and the Flash Slideshow Maker flash app. Both these flash apps look identical in the way they work and the options they provide. It is true that is very little functional or visual differences between the two. Our development team is working to make improvements to these Flash Apps to make they largely unique. As a small step forward, we’ve added new Transition Effects to the Flash Banner Creator Flash App. The new effects are namely – TileFlip, CarWipe, Mosaic and Random. These effects are unique on their own and should lend better impact to your Flash Banner flash apps, specifically Mosaic and TileFlip that should be very suited to banner transitions.
Also, the Flash Banner Creator has a a filmstrip-type Navigation Bar option (called by the same name) which is not available in the Slideshow Maker (actually this should have been reverse – it makes better sense to have the FilmStrip in the Slideshow Maker).
I hope the information helps. We are looking at add more features to both these Flash Apps and I’ll keep the blog updated with the developments.
A happy new year to all. This is the first post this 2013 and here is a tip that comes straight out from a query asked by one of our customers. The query was how to create thumbnails for a Slideshow flash movie. The fact is, this option is not available in the Flash Slideshow Maker. However, the Flash Banner Creator does have this option. Here is where you find it.
In the main Flash Banner Creator settings panel on the left, expand Navigation Bar. In the dropdown list, select Filmstrip option.
Click the Save Project button at the lower left portion of the screen to save the changes. The filmstrip option would look something like this in the resulting flash movie.
The thumbnails are displayed at the bottom by default. When one hovers over any thumbnail, a larger preview of the slide is displayed as shown in the image below:
For those who have not chosen Flash Banner Creator as your paid Flash App, you may request a swap of your Flash Apps to make it a paid app. I hope this tip was useful. Please feel free to share your comments or suggestions on any options that you’d like to use in your flash movies.
There is a need when you have to create multiple versions of the same project. And you don’t see a “copy” option to simply create a copy – what do you do? Sometimes, you’re short of time and you end of redoing the same flash project, all over again. Gosh, that really sucks. Okay, here is somewhat better way to make life easy. Just pop in a support ticket mentioning the name of the project and the number of copies you’d like to create and we’d be happy to do so. I do however understand that it may not work when you’re short of time, but we’d get this arranged in less than a business day if that ETA would work for you.
I know you’re asking as to why not have the option on the Members Area. We heard it and it will be available soon in the next release.
If you had ever downloaded your flash movie that has a background music attached, as a FLV or a AVI video file, you’d have noticed that the audio is out of sync with the video. When the rendering engine converts the raw Flex flash movie to a video file, there always seems to be a differential delay in matching the video to the audio track. The differential delay is caused by various factors such as the current load on the server, pending requests, etc. We are still trying to figure out how to normalize the delay factor so that audio mismatch effectively be nullified. However, a workaround to the problem, though a bit lengthy, is this:
1) Remove the sound track from the flash movie. The following KB article provides instructions:
2) Download the flash movie as a video file (this renders the video without the sound track)
3) Use a third-party software such as Windows Movie Maker, DubIt to add the sound track back again to the video file. DubIt can be downloaded from the following link:
I hope that helps. We still do apologize for the inconvenience caused by the audio timing mismatch. Our engineers are working to see if there is an alternate fix that they could implement to resolve the problem. Note that the issue happens only when the flash movie has a background music attached to it.
First of all, to all our US customers, wish you all a happy July 4th! Now, if you’ve been using the Toufee flash player skin for your flash movies, you’d have noticed that there isn’t a replay button. If you have to replay the flash movie, then one has to drag the slider all over to the back to be able to play again. This quite annoying not to mention that many end users of your flash movie may not necessarily be aware how to replay. So here is a quick tip to let add a button item that will act as a replay button for your flash movie. Below are quick steps:
1) On the left panel, click the ‘Text &Items’ option
2) Click Add Button to expand the available list of buttons.
3) Drag a button of your choice to your flash movie. Make sure that the button is placed at the very end in terms of its timing, i.e. when appears in the flash movie
4) Single-click the button so that the left panel options shows up
5) For the On Click dropdown list, select Jump to Time option. Then set a value of 0 seconds in the To Time field.
This should make your button act as a Replay option for your flash movie. I hope the tip was useful. Please feel free to let us know your comments via our Support Desk (http://www.toufee.com/support) and click Submit a Support Ticket option.
There have been increasing queries lately as to how Toufee flash movies can be delivered over mobile devices, given the increasing use of mobile as a content delivery platform thanks to the smartphone wave. Flash found its adoption slower on the mobile platform than on the Internet, arguably so. Adobe Flex, which Toufee is developed on, is yet to get full-stream support on the mobile platform. This presents quite a challenge to make Toufee flash movies work on mobile devices just like they would in traditional Internet environment on PCs.
Gladly, there is a workaround that you could use for now. Since Toufee supports converting flash movies to video files, the answer is to use YouTube as a content delivery medium for your flash movies. YouTube provides an Andriod application that lets you watch the videos. So get the ball rolling and start updating your YouTube channel with your flash movies. A great fit would be the delivery of video-series such as educational tutorials, marketing promo series, etc. So the next time someone asks you how to check your flash movie on their mobile, send them to your YouTube channel!
When working with the Flash Builder, a frequent question that I see from customers is how to set a common background color or a background image for a flash movie. The following KB articles already address adding a background color as well as setting a background image respectively,
Just to clarify a basic question, the default background that is set for a Flash Builder flash movie is a transparent background. It means that the flash movie takes the background of its container, i.e. say you embed the flash movie in your webpage that has a red background, the flash movie takes the red color. If you place the flash movie over a webpage that has a gradient or textured background, then the same background comes through due to the background transparency.
Setting a Gradient background
What’s less obvious is how to set a gradient color for the background. To be able to do this, one has to have a solid color background set. With a backround color set, click the Background label in the Timing bar. This will reveal the Background Properties section in the left panel
Click the Change button to open the Edit Gradient window. You should now be able to set the two colors for the Gradient effect.
A quick tip to achieve sleek gradient effects is to avoid colors that have sparking color contrasts, i.e. don’t go for colors that are two opposite sides of the spectrum, instead choose the second color that is close but distinguishable from first color – this will result in professional looking gradients.
Yesterday, our development team add a nifty little option that should come in very handy. The development team added an option that lets you access the download links from within your Members Area. Inside the Members Area, on the top right, you’ll see the Flash Tools tab. On the top right corner of this tab, you’ll notice a small circled number inside it. Clicking this will reveal a dropout menu that will list all your download links like the one shown in the screenshot below:
This way, you won’t have to wait for the email to get the download link. As soon as your video is processed, the download link will be available from the dropout menu. The usual wait time for the download link is 8-10 minutes. The next time you see a delay with getting the download link, go ahead and re-submit the download request, and check the dropout menu in the Members Area after 8 minutes.
I hope you people find this option. Should you have any questions please feel free to share your comments via the Support Desk.
The other day, I had a support ticket from a customer named Charlotte who wanted to know if its possible to enter custom hex code into the color palette. She had to create a flash banner movie and wanted to match the exact color from her company logo. She wanted to know if there is an option to enter hex code. Looking at the color palette, one may notice that this option is not easy to locate, as a matter of fact its hard to recognize to say the least.
So where can one enter the hex code? If you look at the color palette, you’ll see the hex code displayed for the chosen color. The rectangular area is actually a text box that you can type into. This means you can enter your own hex code and the color palette will take it.
Block and Type, finally press Enter
You’ll notice that the text that you type in may not be visible. This is because the textbox and the font color are both white. You’ll have to block the region (i.e. select the code displayed) and then type in your hex code. Remember to press Enter key after you enter the color code. Simply entering the code won’t set it to the desired color.
I hope this tip helps when working with your flash movies. Thanks to Charlotte for bringing this up.
When working with flash movies, it is common to create hyperlinks in the form of buttons that when clicked takes users to external websites. However, there are instances when you don’t want a button, but instead have any text item clickable. If you’re not already aware, Toufee lets you add buttons to your flash movies. Buttons add the interactivity element to your flash movies in the sense that you may jump to a specific section, have the flash movie pause/play at specific times, or eventually open a website link when clicked. This video tutorial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN_FqGlBduA) actually discusses in detail on how to work with buttons in the Flash Builder.
Buttons as Text Items
What some customers have requested is the ability to add hyperlinks to regular text items. If you look at the current text item option available in the Flash Builder, there isn’t a direct option to hyperlinks text items.
The way around the issue is to use the NoSkin skin-type for the button. This turns the flash button into a regular text item. This virtually creates a text item with the hyperlink features of a button. While internally this item is treated as a button, you may use the regular editor options to change the font, text style, etc on the “NoSkin” -type button.
Note that the instructions/screenshots provided above applies only to the Flash Builder. In the next article, we’ll discuss how to create hyperlinks for flash movies created using the Flash Apps like Flash Slideshow Maker, Flash Accordion Maker, etc.
