Generate Flash from HTML???

[Smangalick]

Hey

I'm working on a website for a student organization, and want to make it in Flash.

I've been looking around at some of the tutorials online, and see that the finished Flash sites look amazing. The only problem is that since its for a student organization, the content needs to be updated fairly regularly. Is there any way that I automatically generate Flash content from HTML (or plain-text)?

If so, how do i do it?

Thanks

 

[nagger]

You can always use PHP to do it. Here's a link to a couple of tutorials (here).

Happy reading

 

[Smangalick]

I'd like to use PHP...unfortunetly, the server does give us access to the PHP interpretor, or the XML parser.

They charge a ridiculous amount for the open-source PHP junk, so its not an option for us right now. I was hoping to do this from an HTML file, or a text file, but if not...
then i might have to shop for a new server.

thanks..and any other suggestions?

 

[Smangalick]

bump...anybody???

 

[Aso]

There is no way to create Flash pages from html or plain text otherwise Macromedia wouldn't have much reason for selling the Flash authoring tool. If you dont have access to any dynamci web scripting languages your best bet will be to create template html files that can be manually updated easily.

 

[Smangalick]

What about within the Macromedia Flash software?

Is there any features that automate the generation of Flash from HTML?

 

[Aso]

They only way I know for sure to generate dynamic flash is with ColdFusion remoting which is only available with coldfusion 5 or coldfusion mx.

Thinking about though, you may be able to read from a text file from flash and display that but I am not to sure how to specifically do this but I sorta remember another programmer at work doing something like this with our designers. Basically they were generating text files from input the user on the website submitted then the flash piece read this file in. The flash piece was then burned to a cd but not displayed on the web but I dont see how this couldnt work on a website. You will have to learn how to script in flash but if you know a real programming language this should be no problem at all.

 

[Smangalick]

Are there any resources that you could point me to?

I know PHP, C++, and some Javascript..and am the process of learning XML (but don't have free access to a server that provides server-side scripting).

Thanks...

 

[Aso]

I dont really do any flash work but I did a quick search on google and came up with a couple sites that looked like might be usefull.

Site 1
Site 2

If you know C++ you will have no problems at all scripting in flash. Hope this helps you get started.

As far as XML goes it is nothing more than a well formated text document.

 

[Buddha Bart]

I'm working on a website for a student organization, and want to make it in Flash.

Flash: 99% Bad - Jakob Nielsen

Jeremy Zawodny

Flashturbation n. The practice of using Macromedia Flash on Web sites for nothing more than demonstrating its cool "whiz-bang" features.

All-Flash A Fast Track to Failure

http://www.alistapart.com/stories/flash/

Now I don't know anyting about your organization or your site, so you could have some perfectly legitimate reasons to go with an all flash site. BUT the odds of that are roughly equal to (and I quote the great wayne) "monkies fllying out of my butt".

Do you have access to any dynamic functionality like CGI, SSI, ASP, CFM, etc? If not you're going to want to do the site in a development tool, just because they'll let you pre-include your template files before uploading.

bart

[edit]P.S. If you don't know who Jakob or Jeremy are, or visit alistapart or sitepoint regularly, you've got a lot of reading to do[/edit]

 

[Smangalick]

Haha...very interesting reading...

As far as how legitimate my reasons are for Flash....I mainly want to learn the ins-and-outs of Flash (something that I'm not too familiar with), and this gives me a reason to learn it. Plus, the website that we are currently using (http://www.umich.edu/miiclub) is pretty terrible, and I want to spice it up.

We're tryin to gain some funding from corporate sponsors, and I figure that a website that looks impressive would help with it.

If anybody has any ideas on how to revamp the site, i'm all ears...

thanks

 

[onelin]

You could always take a crack at SVG That's really just XML in your webpage, interpretted by an SVG plugin. (or your browser itself, when mozilla gets SVG built in). I'm sure you could accomplish what you want, it's just that SVG support isn't very widespread yet, even though Adobe has a decent plugin that works with all browsers.

http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Overview.htm8

 

[SpideyCU]

That's great, I thought I was the only one who thought that about Flash movies!

As an aside, I'm toying with Flash too, but only to make a navigation menu for my site. I'd like to step up from the Javascript one...maybe while I'm at it I'll place an unskippable 2-minute flash intro to my site.

I like Strong Bad's take on the topic: http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html (the irony of it is that it's a Flash movie )

 

[onelin]

Originally posted by: SpideyCU
That's great, I
I like Strong Bad's take on the topic: http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html (the irony of it is that it's a Flash movie )

Strong Bad is the best! One of the greatest examples of flash movies...
and going with his take on it is this awesome site

 

[Buddha Bart]

That's great, I thought I was the only one who thought that about Flash movies!

SpideyCU: There's actually a huge movement within professional web development to really focus on usability (and inherently accesibility) through standardization and best practices. Frankly the only excuse for creating new sites at this point that don't 90% validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional is either being incompetant or lazy.

Web development is completely saturated with amatures who got their understanding of the web from the utter horse-sh!t that was slung about in the late 90's (the 'boom').
For every broadband connection that gets added over the next few years, so will a 64Kbps cellphone or PDA. Meaning not only does does your page still need to remain as small as possible, but your width="600" table and your 450px wide navigation image-map make your site unusable on that user-agent (the pda). Thats not to mention the blind person who's screen reader won't see text embedded in images/flash, search engine that can't index you on your what word links to a section because its in an image/flash, people with high-resolution monitors who like to bump the font size a notch can't, its embedded in the image/flash).

You can still make a great looking site and be XHTML valid, sitepoint, wired, and mysql are a few examples.

This is not to say flash should never be used. It is the tool for cartoons, interactive product displays, and "virtual tours". Flash is a piece of content to be delivered with your site to best convey some information, not for navigation or being the framework of a site.

anyway, bedtime

bart

 

[onelin]

well said, bart. If there is a huge movement I don't know about, I'm glad there is. Personally I've been very frustrated with trying to make pages accessible to all, but browsers keep treating my validated XHTML code differently, etc... render errors abound, etc... I think there needs to be a standards support movement, too (for browsers). anyways...I'll stop before I really get into a rant.

 

[Aso]

Buddha Bart,
Thanks for those links. We just had marketing have our website redone all in flash and its pretty unusable. I think the term flasherbation is a great term for it. The site gives more space for the pretty flash stuff then for actual content that tells about what our business can do. If you guys want to see it heres the link. I am kinda to say work as a web developer for a company that cant a usable homepage for themselves. The good thing is though none of us web programmers were involved and it was all designers who did it

 

[Smangalick]

Thanks for the help everybody...I think I'm gonna rethink whether using Flash is really worth it.

If anybody has any ideas of how to spice up this site...and make it look more professional, please let me know

Here's the Current site

thanks....i'm looking to totally redesign the site, and add more content and things to it.