MAXBloggers.net - Day 3: Morning sessions
I decided to take some time away from the sessions, and try to find a good wireless connection (the connection in the rooms is flaky -- I'd complain, but what did we do at conferences before wireless?)
Developing PDA-based applications with Flash
- Flash can create apps for Pocket PC or Sony CLIEs
- Pocket PC
- Flash 6 is available as a ActiveX control for pIE
- works with all PPC 2002/2003 devices
- Standalone player is available, you can also bundle this with the swf (adds about 900k to file size)
- Palm OS (5+)
- Standalone player only
- CLIE devices only
- Flash files must be on a memory stick
- other devices listed at: www.macromedia.com/software/devices/supported
- there is also a Flash Lite on some devices (phones)
- also 3rd party solution - www.antmobile.com
- when building device swf - must remember to set version to publish as (5/6)
- Flash Pro 2004 has a number of templates (really just a screenshot of the device + a sized version of the Flash stage)
- performance issues
- keep frame rate about 12-15 fps
- avoid a lot of actionscript, alpha fills, full screen movements (like wipes)
- 3rd party sites
Developing sites for Macromedia Contribute
- Contribute is this interesting 'Content Manager' - not really CMS, but a static web page manager targetting non-technical users
- “Cross between a word processor and a browser“
- WYSIWYG view - no ability to get to source
- can use DreamWeaver files (best), or any other HTML files (including hand bombed)
- User is given a key to install their version
- Administrator can limit edit functionality by user
- role based
- can assign group home page, which folders have editable content
- can force new pages be a copy of an existing, or use specific templates
- can protect server-side code in pages
- works with external (Office) documents -- Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF
- conserves formatting/styles (doesn't use Word's convertor - yea!)
- can also import as Flash Paper
- printer driver that produces Flash movie that looks like page
- enables printing, zooming, paging
- works with version control (built-in?)
