David Stiller’s blog

I’m on the technical advisory board for Sessions School of Design, a distance learning school based in New York.  Anjula Duggal, managing editor for the Sessions blog (DesignSessions:  Notes on Design), recently asked me to guest author a handful of articles for them, which I’m happy to do.  Thanks to Anjula and editor Katie Feo for helping to get me squared away! 

My first article is here:

http://blog.sessions.edu/web-design/how-to-save-bandwidth- when-displaying-flash-video/

kweku and nab have been interested a play/pause button — essentially a toggle button, something that “remembers” when it’s been clicked — and fortunately, the mechanics are fairly simple.  The key to the desired functionality is a Boolean variable.  Let’s take a look.  Keep reading »

Quick FYI:  Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers sample files are now available on the book’s friends of ED website page.  The downloads were just a tad late, so Tom and I have been fielding a few emails.  Hope you enjoy ’em!

What a cool invitation!    I was asked, not long ago, to be on the judge panel for the Flashforward2007 Film Festival.  I’ve seen over 100 entries, many of which were truly what I’d call “cream of the crop” examples of what Flash is all about.

I’m looking forward to the conference itself in September!  I’m always happy to meet people I’ve come to know online.

In reply to a request from kweku, here’s another look at the basic slider used in the two-part “How to Build a Flash Video (FLV) Progress Bar” series.  This time, the slider widget, comprised again of two movie clips, will be used to adjust the volume of an FLV video file.  The ActionScript 2.0 involved is fairly straightforward and, in fact, can be cobbled together from existing articles on this blog.  Let’s break it down.  Keep reading »

On Thursday, July 12, 2007, a hefty box arrived at my doorstop.  Inside?  My author’s copies of Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers, written by Tom Green and me.  What a way to perk up the afternoon! 

Right away, I flipped to the XML chapter to show Meridian the picture of herself (she’s in one of the XML sample files, which includes a number of JPGs).  Keep reading »

In Part 1, not quite a week ago, we looked at a relatively simple way to track the progress of an FLV file as played without the FLVPlayback Component in a SWF.  Here in Part 2, we’ll make the knob draggable, causing the video to seek to the point in time that corresponds to the knob on its track.  As it turns out, the ActionScript involved doesn’t change all that much.  It may look like a lot more code, but the mechanics should be easy enough to follow.  Keep reading »

Often, but not always, I syndicate my blog entries on the blog at Community MX, CMXtraneous.  That particular blog has a word limit on article length, so not everything I write makes it over — that, and sometimes I simply forget to copy/paste my content to both locations.  In any case, I don’t see replies to the CMX entries nearly as often as I do my own, but I do try to make the rounds.  I just found three replies to my recent “Making Buttons Work in Flash CS3 (ActionScript 3.0),” and since the CMX interface doesn’t seem to like replies with sample code in them, I’m replying to those comments here.  Keep reading »

Following on the heels, at least conceptually, of “How to Control Video (FLV) without a Component” here’s a quick look at how to indicate the progression of an FLV by way of a custom made progress bar (thanks for the suggestion, Rick!).  In a follow-up article, I’ll show how to make the progress bar interactive by having the draggable knob seek to keyframes in the FLV.  It turns out that much of the code for this first part derives from “How to Determine the Completion of a Flash Video (FLV) File,” which shows how to determine video length, with and without the use of Components, in ActionScript 2.0.  In this article, we’ll be going the non-Component route, because FLVPlayback already has a progress bar.  Before we delve into the code, we need to prepare two small movie clips.   Keep reading »

Traditional VCR controls usually incorporate fast forward and rewind buttons, which either increase the playback speed of the video or quickly play it in reverse, respectively.  The result is that you can skip around in a video but still maintain some sense of where you are.  Useful as these controls might be, you won’t find them in any of the FLVPlayback Component skins.  (What appear, at first glance, to be FF/RW buttons, are actually a means to jump to optional navigation cue points in the video, much like jumping to chapters on a DVD.)  Is it possible, then, to fast forward and rewind FLV files?  Sure thing.  Let’s take a look.  Keep reading »