Integration with Flash

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi, I have a requirement to integrate a rails app with flash content, in particular a flash banner with scrolling pictures. Can anyone provide some links to doc's or advice on how to do this. The user also likes the way flash sites look in general and might want the complete front end to be flash as oppose to css/html as I have it now.

Regards, PK

2

Thanks, I'll have a look and I will need to do some more research on rails integration with flash.

3

Hi PK,

Note that Flex is a way of writing Flash applications that is more appealing to programmers than designers. If you're a Rails developer, you'll probably find Flex more approachable than Flash.

Look at http://flexonrails.net/ for a good start. (I'm writing a book too, but I won't link to it since that's a bit cheesy. Google for "flex rails book" if you're curious--there's lots of MIT-licensed sample code showing Flex + Rails using HTTPService...)

Cheers, Peter Armstrong

4

Peter, I appreciate it. I'm fairly new to Rails dev too but if I didn't want to write the flash program yet and just integrate with existing flash pieces initially would you still recommend Flex? When will the book be released? I'm certainly curious.

5

I just found this, I hope this works. http://onrails.org/pages/applications/dvds

6

do you have dynamic stuff going into flash now?

I tried to google on this earlier but at flashforward Austin last sept I saw this demo there they has a nice XHTML+CSS page. They added a little JS for flash detection and if the user had flash it loaded the HTMLinto the flash and it had all the "cool" flash stuff. but if the user did not have flash or JS turned on they (as well as search engines) saw the HTML. it was real cool but I can't remember what it was called.

maybe someone else has seen it. swfobject or something like that.

not much help, eh?

john

7

dear sender, i�m out of the office until may 29th. your email will not be forwarded. for urgent stuff please contact joern@fork.de kind regards, alexander

8

Nothing dynamic yet, but I'll be moving towards that direction eventually. I'd like to find out exactly what you are talking about b/ c it sounds really interesting and useful. One of my concerns of using flash anywhere would be if an end user did not have it.

9

I wish i could remember too. I know you can load/read XML into flash easily. With actionscrip3 it's real easy. you could get rails to write an xml and then load it into flash and then use the same xml for a non flash version?

I know you can do a redirect when you check for flash, so if they don't have flash send the to the part that transforms XML into html.

I know that is a long way around and probably not the best solution... but at least both versions read from the same data, eh?

you can search for flash xml and find tutorials. adobe's flash has a great built in help section

john

10

and with flash you can create cool custom cursors like this one http://linein.org/temp/award.swf

11

pk16 wrote:

Nothing dynamic yet, but I'll be moving towards that direction eventually. I'd like to find out exactly what you are talking about b/ c it sounds really interesting and useful. One of my concerns of using flash anywhere would be if an end user did not have it.

do you have dynamic stuff going into flash now?

I tried to google on this earlier but at flashforward Austin last sept I saw this demo there they has a nice XHTML+CSS page. They added a little JS for flash detection and if the user had flash it loaded the HTMLinto the flash and it had all the "cool" flash stuff. but if the user did not have flash or JS turned on they (as well as search engines) saw the HTML. it was real cool but I can't remember what it was called.

maybe someone else has seen it. swfobject or something like that.

Hi,

I came across this the other day, sounds like what you are referring to.

http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

K.

12

Before I saw some of the latest links I installed the http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/flashobject plugin and was able to load a flash banner for the home page. However, whenever I switched to any other page on the site the flash banner failed to load. Any ideas? I have the reference to the flash banner in my main layouts.rhtml but for some reason when switching to another page its not getting executed.

13

sounds like a reference problem. You probably need an absolute reference. example src="/where_your_swf_file_is.swf" and not src="where_your_swf_file_is.swf" make sense?

John