Flash and Joomla News by Eyezberg

Flash Decompiler Trillix

I already have an article online with an overview of free or commercial SWF decompilers.

The guys from Eltima now kindly gave me access to a full version of their latest release, named Trillix.

I've test-driven it over the week-end, and everything worked perfectly on a SWF I brought over from work which I didn't have the source file for. 

The tool is just GREAT! I can replace URLs, I could recreate the fla from the swf, and the result, exported from Flash (which Trillix opens for you when decompiling is done) to swf, looked exactly like the original SWF.. except I had changed the URL to point to eyezberg.com for some fun, which also works!

If you want to check out: the swf is here: www.clubmed.ch, and here's a screenshot of the extracted images:

I'm not going to attach the .fla obviously, but it is 100% working, and I'm sure it will come in handy next time our agency gets a link wrong  on a friday afternoon!
Here it is opened in Flash:

I was going to post a long review about this software, but I like it so much (having tested it now, I would definitely pay for the full version!) that I am going to play around with the tons of options some more instead and see what else I can change: texts, colors, links..

I love it, thank you Eltima / Stani !

PS: Mac version available also!
 

SWF Decompilers

A bad reputation for sometimes usefull tools: Decompilers allow you to read the ActionScript and extract ressources from SWF files.

Here are the best known of these tools, which might just come in handy some day when you need to look up in an swf which file it loads, or how that particular fonction works.. Range goes from free basic tool to commercial ones with many options:

• Flare

  is free, simple to use by right-clicking an SWF
  
  

• SWF Decompiler

  is very cheap but limited
  
  

• AVE Imperator

  is said to be good, haven't tested
  
  

• Sothink SWF Decompiler

  works well and allows you to recompile a fla from the swf
  
  

• Eltima Flash Decompiler

  has the same functionality
  
  

• ActionScript Viewer, aka ASV

  the best-known, very actively developed decompiler with many features and extensions
  
  

Various Flash News 

It's been a while, so here's a short mix of interesting reads. 

Flash team are asking for your feature requests for Flash 9.

• Player only
• Interactive designers and developers
• Designers and animators

Flash Player - Forward, Backward, Platform Compatibility

Nice article about Flash Players forward, backward, and platform compatibility and how it makes life so much easier for developers.

Smaller changes which caused some problems pointed out in the comments, such as IE7 detection, introduction of the sandbox and the crossdomain.xml policy file, POST data in Safari 1 and no native scrollwheel support on OS X..., are all the network, browser, or ui layers around Flash Player.

Current schedule for releasing the final version of Flash Player 9 for Linux is early 2007.

A a beta version  [will be released] in advance of the final version. However, it will be a beta in the classical software engineering sense-- i.e., a version that we believe to be largely bug-free and submitted to the users in the hopes that the last of the bugs will be found and reported. by Mike Melanson

Favorite Mambots Part II

Since the last update to the list of Favorite Mambots, there have been quite a few new bots published.
In order not to make that first listing too long, I have decided to start this as a second part.
As it stands, the first part already caused out-of-memory alerts on every update, so I'll lleave it as is and continue here.
Suggestions always welcome

1. SocioTag 1.2
   

   Places icons linking to SocialBooking sites (del.ici.ous , furl, blinklist, etc) into your content. Aligns left or right, allows custom css and the option to decide which content you want the 'Sociotag' to be activated in.

2. AdSense 4Joomla

   Display your ads anywhere in your Joomla site, from a Module or directly merged within your Content. - Display Ads, Adlinks or the Google Search form. All of this with only one plugin. - Manage multiple AdSense formats, you can set up to three Ad Layouts and two AdLinks to display. - Define and include your channels, to track your visitors response.
   Free Lite version, commercial full version.

3. MjazTools Personalize

   Insert the current user's name or info in content items.
   Syntax: {username}, {name}, {email}, {usertype}, {registerdate}

4. MosModule

   Display nested articles, execute snippets written in PHP (without tags) and execute external php script filse with passed  parameters (with tags).
   Please take a look at the included readme for full details.

5. MosImageLink

   Adds a link to the first image found in the introtext in the blog-view to the full view of the content item.
   It checks for the HTML-Imagetag and the MosImage Mambot-Tag.

6. SMF Authorbot

   Creates a link from article authors back to their SMF profile. Decided to include here even if not standalone (as forum needed) because it is a nice idea and I would use it if I had a usage for SMF..

7. autoGoogle

   Performs a Google search on any keyword the author specified in the backend.
   Clicking any green linked word in an artcile will open the Google search results page for that term.

8. ROK

   1. RokGuest

      Show certain portions of a content item to people who are not logged-in. Logged-in users will not see this content.

   2. RokMember

      Show certain portions of a content item to people who are logged-in. Guest users will not see this content.

   3. RokTextile

      Provides Textile functionality for content using TextilePHP by Jim Riggs of jimandlissa.com which in turn is a PHP implementation of the Textile shorthand syntax. Textile is used to create valid (X)HTML output without using HTML markup.

9. RequestFilter

   Security plugin!
   This System bot should break attempts to specify values of configuration parameters via POST or GET queries. The plugin will search through the $_REQUEST array to check standard variables such as option, task, no_html, Itemid, id etc. for any url links. In case it finds anything, it will return an error 403 code and then stop the script. Also it will block any attempts to pass the parameters mosConfig_absolute_path and mosConfig_cachepath through GET or POST requests.

10. Xevidwidebot

    Displays Adobe Flash .flv Videos and High Definition Movies in your content items.
    Progressive streaming of FLV Videos (also High Definition), play and pause, Autoplay mode, Volume Control, Title description, Backgroundcolor settings, Popup supported, resize movie width and height...
    Commercial.

11. MultiThumb

    Automatically creates thumbnails and optionally creates popups to the original images in three different ways:
    1. Normal popup in new window
    2. Lightbox popups with picture grouping (image sets)
    3. Thumbnail expansion

12. Jombackup

    Perform automated daily mysql backups and email them to the address of your choice.
    Make sure you visit Mambots->Site mambots and click on the link to JomBackup system plugin to edit & publish it. Plenty of configuration options available!
    It runs every time Joomla is run. Most of the time, all it will do is check for the existance of a checkfile with today's date. If the file exists it will not do anything else, however if the file doesn't exist (IE the local server's time has passed the midnight hour and this is the first time today the site has been visited) then the plugin will perform a backup of the system's mysql data and email it to either the system default email address, or another that you may have specified in the config.
    No tag needed. Very quick and effective, used here: thanks, Vimes!
    

13. Tabs In Content

    Easily add content tabs within standard Joomla content items.
    The tabs simulate a multi-page structure, inside a single page! Very nice piece of code!
    Demo site.

14. J!Tags

    Automatically adds a tagline at the end of your content that links to Technorati.
    The keywords in the tagline are created from the metakeywords for the content item.
    No tag needed, just publish after install.
    

15. Xe-Flickr

    Free plugin to add a Flickr photo slideshow into your content.
    Syntax: { xeflickrbot}31955346@N00{/xeflickrbot }
    

16. RegistrationBlocker

    Prevent certain usernames from being registered. For example, you might not want someone to register by the name of "webmaster" or "admin" since it could give other users wrong ideas about their identity.
    Block one or more usernames. All you have to do is to enter the usernames in the mambot's backend, one on each line. You can even use an asterisk as a wildcard for blocking a whole range of usernames. For example, if you enter admin* in the list, you will block usernames beginning with admin like admin, administrator, administration and so forth. With *admin* you will block all names containing admin, like siteadministrator etc. Usernames are case INsensitive.
    Bonus: RegistrationBlocker works with the standard login component and with Community Builder.
    Thanks, marlar
    

17. TheYard Bots

1. Jx Rot 13
   Crypts the text of content items with the very simple rot13 algorithm which rotates the alphabet 13 (or a selected number) letters to the left or right.
2. Jx Leet Speak
   Translates all content items into leet speak.
3. Jx Title Flag
   Displays a specified flag before or after the content title, or the default flag from the plugin's settings when a specific flag is not given.
4. Jx Show URL
   Prints the URL to the content item above or below the content.
5. Jx Simple Grade
   Add a review grade image to content items.

18. FrontpageBanner

    Show the active banners after first news item on frontpage

19. MosSnippet

    Insert text, html or php code in content. You can create up to 15 snippets using the fields in the mambot editor. You insert the snippets in content by referring to the number or an optional name. For example, {snippet 1} or {snippet paypal}. When processed, the tags will be replaced with the snippet in question. Text and html code will be inserted unaltered, while php code will be interpreted.

20. Googlemaps

    Easily add one or more Google map(s) into your content. You can set width, heigth, latitude, Longitude, zoomtype, initial zoom level, text displayed in a marker and of course the google api key. These parameters can also be set as default in the administrator of Joomla at the plugin.
    Syntax: {mosmap width='500'|height='400'|lat='52.052312'|lon='4.447141'|zoom='3'| zoomType='Large'|zoomNew='0'|mapType='Satellite'| showMaptype='1'|overview='0'|text='sv DWO'|key=''}
    Notes: you need a Google API key to use this, you should read the documentation about the parameters, and the easiest way to get precise long. & lat. seems to be Google Earth
    

21. Component bot

    This may be very handy for some of you: include component output into a content item!
    Note: link is the a forum post with the download attached, if you don't see it, you'll need to register!
    Syntax: {component}url{/component} where url is relative url to your component WITHOUT "index.php?"
    Example: {component}option=com_blabla&Itemid=73&album=7{/component}

22. Simple gallery in Content

    Very nice gallery which couldn't be easier to use in your content:
    Syntax:
    
23. TBC..
    

The making of Flash 8

Macromedia stream a nice video on their Dev site. You'll learn many things about the development of Flash 8, see some faces and product images you haven't seen before.

Click the image to view the video. 

Helen Triolo

Located in Rockville, Maryland, Helen has been providing web design, database programming and Flash development services for businesses, educational institutions and government organizations in the Washington DC / Baltimore area  since 1997.

Her passion is Flash programming for online, CD, and desktop applications. At present, she's an adjunct faculty member at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, where she teaches Flash and Flash ActionScript programming.

Her primary client currently is Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, for whom she's been developing online Flash video applications for the past year and a half. The applications are designed to run in different environments, and can either stream video from a Flash Communications Server, load video via progressive download from a Coldfusion-based web server, or run locally, from an XML data source and local video files. 

Site URL: i-Technica | Flash-Creations

Riva FLV Encoder

Transode your existing video files to the advanced Flash Video (FLV) format with this free encoder.After selecting a source-file, you can easily transcode it into Flash Video using one of the presets, or your custom settings.
To view the result Riva FLV Encoder comes with the free Riva FLV Player.

Currently you can transcode the following formats: AVI, MPEG, Quicktime, WMV.

MediaCoder

A free universal audio/video batch transcoder, putting together lots of excellent audio/video codecs and tools from the open source community into an all-in-one solution, capable of transcoding among different audio/video formats with many extra features. 

Supported Inputs:

 * MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, AAC+/Parametric Stereo, AMR NB/WB, MusePack, WMA, RealAudio
 * FLAC, WavPack, Monkey's Audio (APE, APL), OptimFrog, AAC Lossless, WMA Lossless, WAV
 * H.264, Xvid, DivX 4/5, MPEG 1/2/4, H.263, 3ivx, RealVideo, Windows Media Video 7/8/9, DV
 * AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, RealMedia, ASF/WMV, Quicktime MOV, OGM
 * CD, VCD, DVD, CUE Sheets

Supported Outputs:

 * MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, AAC+/Parametric Stereo, AMR NB/WB, MusePack, WMA
 * FLAC, WavPack, Monkey's Audio (APE, APL), OptimFrog, WMA Lossless, WAV
 * H.264, Xvid, DivX 4/5, MPEG 1/2/4, H.263, Flash Video, etc.
 * AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, PMP (PSP Media Player?Format)

 Softpedia guarantees that MediaCoder 0.3.9 is 100% FREE, which means it is a freeware product (both for personal and commercial use) that does not contain any form of malware, including but not limited to: spyware, viruses, trojans and backdoors.

On2 Flix can convert the following formats to Flash:

Video: .avi, .dv, .mov/.qt, .mpeg, .mp4, .3gp; .asf/wmv (Windows only); .flv (Flix Pro for Windows only)
Audio: .mp3, .wav; wma (Windows only); aiff (Mac only)
Still Image: .jpg, .gif, .png, .bmp, .psd, .tif, .pic, .tga

Macromedia has partnered with On2 to provide the video encoding technology in the Macromedia Flash 8 family of products.
On2 is the developer of the On2 Flix brand of Flash 8 video encoding tools

Sorenson Squeeze 4.3 for Macromedia Flash

• single pane interface to compress video without detailed knowledge of codecs or compression settings
• integrates seamlessly with leading video production applications
• automatically detects the source file's pixel aspect ratio
• very high video quality
• Sorenson Media FLV player makes it possible to play and preview all encoded FLV files