Stream H.264 Flash Video
I’m sure that by now you all know about this popular PHP approach to serving FLV videos progressively, but with the added benefit of being able to seek to any part of the video more or less immediately - something that traditional progressive delivery is not capable of.


Date: 2007-12-28

Check Out BBC’s Flash-Based iPlayer
After having received heavy criticism for rolling out a download based video player which only worked on Windows, the BBC have now teamed up with Adobe and launched the beta version of their new Flash and FMS powered streaming video player, niftly names iPlayer.


Date: 2007-12-18

Configuring FMS on OSX with Parallels
My main development machine is a Wintel iMac running Leopard and Windows XP, the latter of which is normally fired up in Parallels (rarely in Bootcamp).


Date: 2007-12-14

FMS 3 with New Licensing, Huge Price Cut!
Good morning Flashers. It’s official: Flash Media Server 3 will be released in and it will improve pricing dramatically (yay!).


Date: 2007-12-07

Flash Support Added to Yahoo Widget Platform
Yahoo is upgrading the Yahoo Widgets platform to be compatible with Flash and HTML widget development.


Date: 2007-11-30

Flash Resource Site Were-Here Shuts Down
Were-Here, which once used to be a must-visit resource site for Flash and related developers, is shutting down. They are now concentrating on their software development rather than running the site.


Date: 2007-11-16

Free Chameleon Flash
Good news for Flash developers and designers who wish to get 5 FREE licenses from Chameleon Flash.


Date: 2007-11-09

Preserving the Back Button in Flash
When you use a Flash movie as the primary element of a website (including the site’s navigation, etc), your visitors expect it to behave like a website, not a Flash movie.


Date: 2007-11-02

A Flash Video DRM Roundup
At MAX Europe in Barcelona I attended a session on Flash video in which Jens Loeffler of Adobe outlined the upcoming DRM features in Flash video. This was the first time I heard any technical details on how this DRM approach will work and what it can do.


Date: 2007-10-26

Adobe and Flash in the Web 2.0 Era
Adobe’s CEO Bruce Chizen discussed the company’s relevancy in the Web 2.0 era at the Web 2.0 Summit. And surprise, surprise, Flash is a huge part of that relevancy.


Date: 2007-10-19

Pacifica & CoCoMo - A Good Thing for FMS Developers?
We all know that Adobe is pushing put new products and services at an insane rate these days. Apart from announcing Share at MAX in Chicago there were two other products which caught my attention and which are very exciting and a bit scary at the same time: Pacifica and CoCoMo.


Date: 2007-10-12

Flash Lite 3 Launched this Week
This week Adobe announced the availability of Adobe Flash Lite 3, which now supports Adobe Flash Player compatible video and enables the delivery of dynamic Web content on mobile devices.


Date: 2007-10-05

Core Crash Dump For FMS On Windows
A few weeks ago someone posted about problems with their FMS server on the Flash Media List. Asa Whillock from Adobe was kind enough to post these guidelines for creating a core crash dump on Windows.


Date: 2007-09-28

Web Video Goes Wild
Adobe will not allow third party streaming servers to stream H.264 video or AAC Audio into the Flash Player?


Date: 2007-09-21

Silverlight Vs. Flash
The goal of Silverlight is to get into the game, not to add anything new of value. If you look at the feature set on a pure technology basis, Silverlight has 80% less features and 98% less compatibility than Adobe Flash Player.


Date: 2007-09-14

Flash Media Server 3 Announced
Adobe announced the upcoming release of Flash Media Server 3 at IBC in Amsterdam. The next version will offer significant performance gains as well as a new enhanced (and encrypted) RTMP protocol to support new content protection features.


Date: 2007-09-07

Review: Actionscript Cookbook 3.0
I remember starting off beta testing huge bunch of ActionScript codes from Joey Lott which was supposed to be for the ActionScript 2.0 CookBook.


Date: 2007-08-31

Creating a Slide Show in Flash
An interesting way to show a fade-in slideshow using Flash.
In this tutorial, I will be using Flash MX. In Flash MX 2004, and Flash 8, the cosmetic set up should be the same.


Date: 2007-08-24

Text Replacement With Flash - Dangerous?
If you use Flash replacement techniques could Google misinterpret your pages and apply a penalty? Flash replacement techniques are quite a hot topic of late after reported comments attributed to Google about the implications of certain Flash replacement techniques.


Date: 2007-08-17

Eclipse Based .ASC Editor For FMS Released
This is huge. Darren Lee of fczone.com has released an Eclipse plugin which adds support for FMS's AS1-based server side code to Eclipse or Flex Builder 3


Date: 2007-08-07

FlashForward 2007: Register Now and Save
Register now for three days of intensive Flash® education, inspiration, community, and networking. Key-industry speakers, most up-to-date content, and leading industry suppliers join Flashforward for the first time ever in Boston.


Date: 2007-07-24

Deinterlace Your Video Footage!
We all know that Flash video is everywhere these days but what surprises me is how little quality control appears to be applied to the footage that big brands push out these days.


Date: 2007-07-20

Actionscript Error!
I'm attempting to build a site in Flash CS3, but I'm having a few problems. I have my index .fla file with a container built into it. I'm trying to link an swf file into the container using the instance name "container", but I can't seem to get the script right. I want it to load on release of a button.


Date: 2007-06-26

SWFObject Broken In IE7 On Windows?
I've just made a worrying discovery: it seems that in some instances my preferred method of embedding a SWF file into a web page (I normally use SWFObject) can fail in quite a bad way for some users running IE7 on Windows - that's a lot of potential users that cannot see your SWF content.


Date: 2007-06-22

Flash And The Flex Builder
Here's my first tip for working with Flex 2 and Flash CS3. I'm not sure if you have had the opportunity yet to test drive Flash CS3 but if you have and you've also used Flex Builder on a regular basis then F;ash's ActionScript Editor will suddenly appear like a second class citizen to you.


Date: 2007-06-08

Linux Server Tool To Convert FLV To WAV
It seems that the longest ever thread in the forums is starting to bear some fruit. Nellynomore (I love that name) is a Linux tool which can convert FMS recorded FLV audio/video to WAV, which you can then convert further to MP3 or whatever sound format you prefer.


Date: 2007-06-01

MapQuest Launches ActionScript API
MapQuest has launched a new, Adobe ActionScript API that will allow developers to use a robust toolset with the benefits of ActionScript 3.0. Developers will be able to build rich applications with Adobe Flex or Adobe Flash software using a native API for ActionScript for better developer productivity.


Date: 2007-05-29

Slider Control Movie Clip
I am creating a Flash-based tutorial and one of the features I'm using is a slider bar for controlling the interval between "pages" (frames). It consists of a track (used as either a graphic or a movie clip, I can't remember which), a ball (used as a button with the startDrag code attached), and both of those make up the slider control movie clip.


Date: 2007-05-25

Adobe FLVCheck
Adobe have just released a new tool by the name of FLVCheck which allows publishers to 'clean up' malformed FLV video files. FLVCheck will ensure that your files are properly formed. The FLVCheck tool will verify internal timestamps, metadata, and message headers to help identify FLV files that may have trouble playing back from Flash Media Server.


Date: 2007-05-18

Flash Site Dilemma
I've had a client contact regarding his website that was built in flash. The site is indexed but not surprisingly search engines don't rank it at all. The whole site is done in flash, even the content, so effectively it's 1 page. My dilemma is should I:


Date: 2007-05-11

Hands-On-Guide To Flash Video
Some of you may know that I've been working on a book, together with my co-author and all round video meister Jan Ozer.


Date: 2007-05-04

Justin.tv - 24/7 Live Streams In Flash
I'm going to be proven right: live Flash video is going to be huuuge this year. Take Justin.tv as an example - this guy wear a webcam strapped to his head and he does this around the clock.


Date: 2007-04-13

Flash Is 99% Good
Well Flash improved and was way up on accessibility and usability; Jakob even joined erstwhile Macromedia to work together to improve Web Usability and develop best practices for developing Rich Internet Applications.


Date: 2007-04-06

Search Engines and Flash
The article is sobering for those of us who were hoping for a 100% optimizable version of Flash, but at the same time I must stress that there are ways to optimize around Flash if no other alternative is possible.

Date: 2007-03-30

Chizen: 'Flash Media Server A Big Surprise'
In it he mentions his suprise about the power of Flash video and states how Flash Media Server turned out to be a big surprise. I wonder what he means by that - Flash video is exploding, that's clear, but FMS was never a product that has been pushed very hard by neither Macromedia nor Adobe.

Date: 2007-03-23

Trillian Gets Flashy
I initially saw this on Ryan Stewart's RIA blog and then again on Aaron West's TrajikyHip blog: The next version of Trillian, codenamed Astra, will be based on Flash and will also have a desktop client that provides integration with the host operating system - possibly even cross-platform.

Date: 2007-03-16

Tips for Flash Implementation
I have written a few times about the problems with putting flash on your site. It’s cool, and it’s sexy, but search engines want text rich sites, and movies and text rich content don’t mix.

Date: 2007-03-09

Flash Transparency In Firefox
A WebProWorld member has been struggling with some cross-browser compatibility issues regarding Flash transparency. This is surely a common problem and I thought was worth bringing up in FlashNewz. WebProWorld member Matheen writes:

Date: 2007-03-02

5 Days Of Live Webcasting: The Making Of Heidies
I really wanted to follow up on this and I am happy to now present you with an email interview with an official spokesperson from Diesel. As you may remember, Diesel instigated the Heidies campaign in which two girls hijack Diesel.com, holding their underwear salesman and his unreleased intimate collection hostage, and broadcast live for five days, courtesy of Flash Media Server.

Date: 2007-02-23

Consuming A WebService With Flash Media Server 2
Friday's here and you know what that means - three more awesome Flash sites for you all to dissect. This week's selection goes a long way to showcase just how spectacular a well-designed Flash site can look.

Date: 2007-02-16

Flashy Video Advertising
Whether you wish to promote your business, or as YouTube says "Broadcast Yourself," video content beats text adverts hands down. First, the viewer gets to see the merits of your products and services instead of being told about them. Second, videos say more in less time so it's more convenient to the people you want to advertise your business or yourself, too.

Date: 2007-02-09

FMS: Pending Clients Before Accepting A Connection
I'm currently working on a video chat app using Flash Media Server and Flex. This will be version 2 of my Ameegos.com excercise and this time I want to add real scalability to the app.

Date: 2007-02-02

Why BBC Doesn't Use Flash (Video)
Those of you based in the UK (and probably some of you who aren't) may have noticed some recent changes on the BBC website, in particular the update to the audio and video player which now uses Windows Media Player as well as Real Player (it used to be just Real).

Date: 2007-01-26

Preserve your site's uptime and integrity
Thinking your web environment is secure and knowing it's secure are two entirely different things. With your data, your site's uptime and your business' reputation all hanging in the balance, thinking your security is adequate just isn't good enough. You have to know, without a doubt, that from every angle everything is secure.

Date: 2007-01-25

SEO Friendly Flash
6 different web designers have asked me about making Flash SEO friendly in the last month, so I'll post some tips here.

Date: 2007-01-19

Adobe, Verisign, FMS And P2P
If you are on the ball when it comes to Flash Video then youre likely to have seen the press release that made the rounds in the last few days.

Date: 2007-01-12

Build Desktop Applications with Adobe Flash or Flex
Zinc™ 2.5 is the Industry Standard Solution to Create, Build and Deploy real Desktop Applications for Windows and Mac OSX based upon the Adobe (previously Macromedia) Flash® Format!

Date: 2007-01-09

Scammers Go Phishing With Flash
Since anti-phishing measures can involve analyzing the content of a page to determine if it is a phish or not, some criminals have shifted to Flash to evade their notice.

Date: 2007-01-05