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!

Hey all!

Firstly, wish everyone a Happy New Year 2008. I admit its been a long while since I posted something onto the blog, and if only something useful comes to my mind, do I write a post. To be honest, I’ve been dumb all these days (”I couldn’t think well enough ) .

I received an interesting email to Support asking if we do have any flash movie on Clinton vs Obama battle that is currently going on. Well, we didn’t have any! So I was curious if any of our users have created flash movie on this topic? As the user has mentioned, its definitely the hottest topic right now and any flash movie on it will make you instantly popular (Google indexes all public Toufee flash movies very regularly).

If you have already created a flash movie on this, please do send in your movie to help@toufee.com and I’ll post it onto the blog. I guarantee that I’ll post all the flash movies that I receive, so people this is a great opportunity to showcase your flash movie skills.

Imagine a product that takes evolves with ideas from thousands of minds - the result is a near perfect product that works flawlessly. Asking users what they want is far more effective than brainstroming sessions in swanky conference halls with little end-user participation. At Toufee, we believe in keeping things simple and what better way to give users what features they want than to directly ask them? So if you think there’s something you wish to see in Toufee you can directly post your suggestions at www.toufee.com/wiki

Posting suggestions at Toufee Wiki requires that you create a user account and creating an account takes less than a minute. Also, its better this way because each one of us can know who posted what.

I’ve already created a base list of sugggestions or features requests to start with and you can easily and quickly work on those to add your own suggestions. If for any reason you find trouble adding your ideas to Toufee Wiki, you can email them to me at ganesh@toufee.com and I would post onto the Wiki on your behalf.

Thanks
Ganesh

Nope, we’re not asking you to do marketing campaigns for Toufee, that’s asking too much :). We wanted to make the best free online flash movie maker and we ended up creating Toufee. Ever since its inception, Toufee has evolved as the preferred online flash movie maker tool. We didn’t do any marketing, we never ran any campaigns and still we’ve grown this far simply because we had the support of our users all over the globe.

So what are we asking you to do? Help us with promoting Toufee as the best online flash movie maker tool? Absolutely not! If not for the support of our users all this while, we couldn’t have made it to where we are today in the business of online flash movie maker tool. We created Toufee alright, but we owe this success to all those people who have spread the word of Toufee, recommending to their friends, to their peers at work and sharing their experiences with Toufee to large community of flash users and enthusiasts. One couldn’t ask for any better visibility than this. And the best part is that, there are thousands of happy Toufee users who continue to help us promote Toufee, not by any campaigns, but by their creative flash movies did using Toufee.

All that we ask you is to enjoy using Toufee, create great flash videos and share them with your friends (you can use the “Share This Movie!” link found at your Toufee movie page to email your flash movie to your friends), create flash banners for your websites, create flash video tutorial for learning or do any flash video that you feel is worth creating with Toufee. Now, did I say you shouldn’t promote Toufee?

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 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!

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

1. Work while you’re on the move An online free flash movie maker like Toufee helps you go places without worrying about your presentation for the upcoming meeting - you can do it while you’re on the move - in your car or in the Tube, in your living room, during your coffee…no matter where you are, Toufee helps you work effortlessly on your flash presentations
2. Single File, Single Version Imagine you create your flash movie in your home PC, you’re half-done, you copy it in your laptop, contine working on it, you’re still not finished and so you upload to a FTP site so that you can download it later and work in your office desktop. By the time you complete your presentation you have a dozen files and you’re left wondering which version is the latest. Imagine copying the wrong version only to find its half-done in the middle of a review meeting!!! With Toufee, you maintain a single flash movie presentation regardless of where and how you work on it.
3. Get, Set, Go An online flash editor like Toufee allows you get started on your presentations right away. Toufee’s clean and user-friendly interface ensures that there is minimum learning curve which means you can jump-start in creating your movies or presentations in a flash!
4. No software/hardware hassles Online movie makers like Toufee dont require you to install big software, have MBs or GBs of RAM and can significantly cut down on your software and hardware costs
5. Its Free! Good things sometimes do come free. Imagine spending hundreds of dollars on Flash softwares if all you want to do is create a simple flash movie - thats where Toufee scores - its free, and you still get quality outputs that you can get using similar paid softwares