Flash and Joomla News by Eyezberg

FlaRIA

FlaRIA makes creating W3C valid websites easy

is yet another Flash (AS2) / PHP based online content management system. You can download and use it completely for free, only thing that'll happen is after 100 visits a "powered by" / register link will be displayed. Registration is on a per-domain basis.

Features:

Create W3C HTML 4.01 Transitional / W3C CSS Valid FLASH / AJAX and PHP web-sites online.

•  Create, edit and update your web pages without ever leaving your browser window.
• Add HTML, Flash9 / AS3, PHP, Javascript, Java etc. code elements to your flash site.
• Deep linking and real URLs for flash, full support for google analytics.
• Add any content - images, videos, 3D, animation, text and components with couple of clicks!
  
• Edit links, x, y, width, height, depth, color and alpha.
• Image editor with multiple image banks, video editor, style editor for components, link editor, WYSIWYG template & text editor, HTML/CSS editor.
• Create menus online! XML editor / menu manager.
• Filemanager for uploading/deleting/renaming of files.

As George would say: "What else..?" >>

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Elf Yourself

Elf Yourself

Nothing spectacular, but fun: upload your own jpg photos, and they'll be inserted into this very Christmas-like animation of dancing elves.

 

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Joomla goes GPL again

Joomla! goes GPL - again

GPL? What is that? If you don't know, you didn't pay attention during the installation process of your website. It is the license Joomla comes under. Some things you will want to know about this license, in order to understand what this post (and long discussions) are all about.
1. Software licensed as GPL is free in the meaning of: you can change it as you need, there is no charge for it (the software itself).
2. You are allowed to charge for the distribution of the software (the actual download, or sending it out on CD).
3. As the software itself is free, anyone who has a copy is allowed to distribute it, charging for this or not.

Joomla has always been released under this license. For a long time, ever since Mambo which still supports this, there was a policy of allowing commercial, even encrypted extensions to co-exist with Joomla. In the SVN code for 1.5, there even was a rider added for around 12 months, which recently was removed again.
The problem is that any limitation imposed on the distribution of an extensions makes it non-GPL. Same goes for encrypted code.
Most, if not all, commercial extensions are thus released under other licenses, which are not compatible with the GPL.
These extensions use calls to the Joomla API to run.

Recently one of the main developpers and projects leaders, after removing this rider, declared
a. that the rider was added illegaly as not all code contributors (thus license holders) were informed and asked for approval
b. that this rider should never have been added as it was not compliant with the GPL
c. that all extensions are to be considered as derivative works, and thus need to use the GPL license too
d. that Joomla will seek to enforce compliance within the community from now on.

This was started by a simple forum post, inviting developers and users to contribute their ideas and feelings about this.
The biggest thread ever in Joomla history started, went on and on for about 2 months reaching almost 2000 posts, and almost no core developer participated, or tried to clarify Joomlas intentions.
When the thread started to become really a bit much to manage, and pressure from both users and devs rose to certainly unexpected levels asking for a clear statement about the idea behind this "back to GPL but we've always been GPL", all of a sudden, apparently after recieving legal advice from the FSF, first there was a blog about this, and then 2 pages of posts/replies from Core members finally answering some of the questions.
The thread was then closed, shortly after some subforums opened for everything GPL related - the dicsussions still go on.
Posts were censored, threads closed.
Saka and Predator left the Core team because they do not agree with this change of policy.
Some working group members left also.
The Joomal Commercial Developers Alliance (JCD-A) was created.
So much for the last 2-3 months.

What is the problems for the developers of commercial extensions?
They can still sell their extension even if it's GPL.
But: they couldn't encrypt important parts of it anymore, and they can't keep anyone who has obtained a copy of their product from redistributing it for free!
This basically means they can't  protect their work if they want to comply fully with the license.

What is the resulting problem for end users?
Two possible answers:
1. popular commercial extensions continue to be sold as currently, in breach of the license, and they're fine because not the user must comply with the license, but the developer -each dev is responsible for his own license and enforcing it. But at some point Joomla / OSM could decide to enforce the GPL and have them close shop by legal means.
2. to avoid this issue, dev's decide they can't reasonably make an income with support and memberships instead of selling individual copies of their scripts, and stop development for Joomla, which thus looses much of it's capacities and interest.
3. devs decide to change their business model to comply, do not make enoughincome anymore and are forced to quit.

What do I think about all this? ...

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Open Flash Chart

Open Flash Chart

A nice simple open source Flash Chart: use a simple text file, or the provided PHP class to pull in dynamic data.

It's all lfree, you can download the .fla to edit, the PHP file, you get all you need to get you started, even a tutorial.

Thanks Teethgrinder!

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Visited countries

Free Flash Map of all the countries in the world you have visited

Interactive Maps provides a very easy way to integrate a map of your visited countries to your website:

1. select the countries via checkboxes
2. click generate
3. copy the code output for you
4. paste into your site

Here's mine: Thank you! (might not show if using Mozilla browser...)

Make your visited countries map

Flash charts

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amCharts

amCharts provides free dynamic pie, line, and bar charts 

Today I received notification about some new Flash charts called amCharts.
You can download and use these charts for free.
The only limitation of the free version is that a small link to the web site will be displayed in the top left corner of your charts.

You can choose amongst 3 different animated chart styles:

• Pie and Donut chart

  Your pies can easily become donuts. They can be 2D/3D and you can set desired angle and height. When you click on a pie slices or legend entries, the slices can slide out/in.
  See examples (opens in new window)
  

• Line and Area chart

  The user of this line chart can zoom into the desired area of the line chart! You also can hide/show graphs and turn on/off balloon tips indicating the value of the point. You can add custom bullets, links and descriptions on your points. You can have two Y axes – this is very comfortable if you want to display data which differs a lot.
  See examples (opens in new window)
  

• Column and Bar chart

  It is only one tool, but has all column/bar features you might need – it can be clustered, stacked and 100% stacked, may be 2D or 3D. Like in the line chart, you can add links and descriptions to bars/columns. You can switch from Bar chart to Column chart just by changing one variable.
  See examples (opens in new window)

These charts read data and settings from XML or CSV files. That means that they are platform independent. Data and settings files are separate – you can have a designer work with the settings file, meanwhile a programmer can work on generating data file in XML or CSV. And you can be sure that they will not interrupt each other. And even more – you can pass data to charts directly from your html.

Read on for pricing and license informations, and link to website ...

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Flash Player 9 for Linux

Flash Player 9 for Linux beta is available

This beta includes 2 gzip'd tarball packages:

• one is for the Mozilla plugin and
  
• the other is for a GTK-based Standalone Flash Player.
  

Either will need to be downloaded manually via the Adobe Labs website and unpacked.

The standalone Player (gflashplayer) can be run in place (after you set its executable permission). The plugin is dropped into your local plugin directory (for a local user) or the system-wide plugin directory.

This screenshot by Adobe's James Ward is from a pre-alpha version of Flash Player 9 running a JBoss Collaboration client on Linux.

Let me quote him on this:

Flex 2 and Flash Player 9 are changing how the world builds and experiences web applications. Now we have a ubiquitous and consistent virtual machine to run real applications in. And we have an amazing programming model and SDK to build those applications with. Best of all, it's all free (as in beer)! I have been working with JBoss on a Flex based collaboration client and the results have been stunning. It's beautiful, extremely fast, and as soon as Flash Player 9 on Linux debuts it will work the same on any OS or browser, without any "if IE" workarounds! When Apollo is available this will get even more interesting since we can take the same collaboration client application and run it offline, without the browser!

Download | Release Notes | Version Test (after install)

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Shared Object Local editors

SOL or Local Shared Objects editors 

Flash cookies, known as SOL files, can store a lot of information without most users knowing about it. They are becoming widely used tools to track site visitors, just like the standard browser cookies, with the benefit of not being cleared when the user deletes his regular cookies.

SOL files are read on written by SWF files, and stored in a not easily accessible location. With the tool listed heere, it is possible to

• browse the stored SOL files
• read file contents
• modify variable values inside those files (usefull for testing)
• create new SOL files
  

Two tools are free, the third also but only for ASV customers.

ASV SOL Editor

Website

With ASV SOL Viewer and Editor you can,

    * Open and view SOL files,
    * Edit contents of SOL files,
    * Create new SOL files.
this is a tool which is free for ActionScript Viewer customers, and not available otherwise.

Viewing SOL Files

The contents of the open SOL file will be presented as a tree structure. The root item indicates the name of the Shared Object. You can edit this name using the File|Edit Object Name command. (However, changing the Object Name will render the SOL file useless. Not recommended unless you are creating a new SOL file).

Items listed at the first level below the Object name correspond to the properties of the Shared Object, of various types. Certain types can only have a value, some (like array) can have a child items which can be any of the other types.

Editing SOL Files

When an item is selected, the name of the selected property and its value (if applicable) will be shown on the panel to the right.

You can edit the Property Name and the Value fields, then press Enter or the Apply button to make it permanent (You'll still need to save the file though). For String and XML types, you can edit the Value in the text box (to insert a return character, press ctrl+Enter).

You can also save the contents of the text box to a file, or load it from a file, using the Save/Load buttons. (UTF8 encoded text/xml files are not fully supported in this version).

Creating new items:

You can either use the toolbar buttons or right-click menu to access the item related commands.

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.sol Editor

Website

This tool opens an existing shared object file (.sol) displays the contents of the file and allows you to change the variable values.
When you create a Flash movie wich uses the local shared object, it is useful to see what is stored and change the values to test all possibilities.

It can read values of type :
 * Number
 * Boolean
 * String
 * Object
 * null
 * undefined
 * Array
 * XML
 * Date
It can't change the type of a value, but from version 1.0.6.0, you can add or remove values.

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SolVE

Website

SolVE is a Local Shared Object View/Editor that runs on both Mac OS X and Windows. Coded in Java with IBM's SWT, SolVE looks and behaves like a native application. Currently, SolVE supports the following data types in local shared object files:

    * Number
    * Boolean
    * String
    * Object
    * Null
    * Undefined
    * Array

Features

SolVE is not entirely feature-rich at this point. Still in version .2, the interface allows for basic operations only. The main differentiator between SolVE and the other .sol editors (.sol Editor and ASV SOL Viewer/Editor) is that SolVE is a native solution for Mac OS X users and SolVE is available in languages other than English. Basic feature list:

    * Runs on Mac OS X and Windows, as long as a JVM at least v1.4 is installed
    * Create new .sol files
    * Interactive tree display to visually inspect and change contents of a .sol file
    * Internationalization support.

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Ressources

Adobe Technote: What is a local shared object?

Flash Support Center: using SharedObject.getLocal

SOL file format: SOL file format by Alexis ISAAC

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Joomla now and when

1. Joomla! 1.0.x

• 12 versions in 12 months, means a lot of updates, which sometimes did break things when they were supposed to fix... of course, it is necessary to close security holes asap, but this should be prioritized by the whole team then , tested, and other considerations put on hold. 9011 Posts in Upgrade forums.
  
• More and more sites hacked / cracked (7314 Posts in Security Forums) lately: this indicates Joomla! is very popular, but also indicates there are serious concerns about security issues, no mater if it's in core as my own logs seem to indicate, or in 3rd party extensions.

Conclusion:

• as good as it is, either 1.0 gets some more serious attention, or it's obsolete compared to the new framework being coded for 1.5.The register_globals setting just made a major mess out of many components. Maybe it is a bad setting, but .x versions are not supposed to do that, and this is an officially recommended setting now.
• security concerns shouldn't be left to recommendations on the forums for users to look up; get 1.0.x tight against known hack attempts, and bug free if possible, and then integrate all possible recommendations into the code, maybe even a new section under Help integrating the other recommendations, so users do not have to go look for them.
  Edit 09/09/06: point just proven for example by this forum post...
  

2. The retrospective

Although a nice article, I don't really like a few parts of it.

• This article explains 1.5 is (going to be sometime) the new project which will finally differentiate Joomla! from Mambo.
  Johan says that when starting dev again as the new Joomla! team, they decided to "choose a safer solution by doing a short and quick release", that "international community pressure, especially from the French community, convinced [them] to go for a shorter release cycle", and that "it would soon become clear that this was a vital mistake." Maybe that became clear, but it wasn't communicated, and this article makes it kinda look like this was mainly the "French community pressure" which led to wrong decisions.
  This pressure was indeed high, because it was left over from before the split/fork/spoon, when word was out Mambo 4.5.3, which included an internationalized administration, would be released soon (at least beta); SVN (CVS then) was already looking good.
  Back then, a translatable admin was available as a core hack; hard to maintain, yet widely used by international communities. We all know what core hacks are: mostly trouble and update problems. Where are we today, over a year later? Right at the same spot: either using a core hack, or hardcoded translations, one per community (so you can't use admin with contributors speaking different languages).
  There are good reasons for 1.5, but it still would've been better after the 1.0 rebrand to get Mambo 4.5.3 code ready for release (coded by the same team, remember?), which would've eased the pressure for sure, gathered new steam; and THEN started the recoding of the core. Well, too late now.
• "1.5 still is a minor release.", expected to "keep a 80-90% backwards compatibility rate", as Johan says in this post . But then, in the same post "1.5 is a showcase of where we want to take the project. U could think about it as   our statement for the future. The concepts used in 1.5, the new framework, refactoring, ... are the groundwork for Joomla! 2.0."
  In the blog posting, the changes and recoding towards the new API / framework are described as finally starting on some of the points planned for Mambo 5!? You can't update a 1.0 site to 1.5, only migrate.
  I fail to see logic in all this.
  Either you realize (which apparently you did) the code needs a complete reworking; and take the decision the time has come to do so (that would've been a year ago). Then you tell everybody so,  start planning etc and get that killer version out, including the missing parts everybody agrees on (ACL, NBS, OOP and any other acronyms I might've missed here, internationalization of course). This would make a loong wait understandable.
  Or you use the existing code (4.5.3) to get a first version out with the announced and awaited major feature, even if it does not meet all future requierements, and go from there.
  
  You can't update to 1.5 as indicated before, and (from the blog) "Alot of the larger features (ACL, NBS,...) on our roadmap can't be implemented in a backwards compatible way" which means Joomla! 2.0 will requiere a new site again, and will break, again, many (?) existing extensions?! hum

3. Joomla! 1.5

Unfortunately, 4 months after the announced beta date, there's still no news about an ETA for the beta (I asked today ..).
Everything looks good to those who access SVN (developers, coders, some long-time users), but the awerage user has no idea when to expect what. But this is what users need and expect, Louis. Inside, first hand details and explanations. Don't just talk to the coders, they can indeed follow SVN, talk to the whole community about what's going on!

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Wink

Wink: create interactive multimedia tutorials for free

Wink is a free Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (for example to explain some functionality of everybody's favorite CMS Joomla! ...).

Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users. 

The cool thing about this software (apart from it being free) is that it generates an swf file which can very easily be presneted online. Capturing mouse movements and keyboard input is automated, so it is really esy to use and you'll quickly achieve professional results. 

 

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