What do you get if you make jello with 25 lines of ActionScript? First place in BIT-101s 25 line ActionScript competition.
It eates up your CPU like it was ... thats right.. jello, but it looks great and was made with just 25 lines of ActionScript code. You can check out the winner and the 100+ entries over at BIT-101
[Via SwfNews]
Eyes on security has released a warning about Cross-site scripting attacks made possible on sites that allow uploadable files - Bypassing JavaScript Filters - the Flash way
Basically, if you have a forum or pages where you allow users to upload files, the user will still be able to execute JavaScript through the SWF file, even if posting of JavaScript is disabled in the forum/on the pages. Allowing JavaScript execution allows malicious users to catch other users cookies from the domain the file is placed.
The solution? Not allowing SWF files to be uploaded and displayed by default.
[Via FlashGuru via ActionScript.com]
This is a cool article: Notes on Parsing SVG Path Tags and Rendering in Flash MX, Helen Triolo shows how you can render complex SVG drawings in the Flash Player using the ActionScript drawing API.
In a slightly related note, John Dowdell has explanied how you can take vectors the other way - from Flash to SVG. Its really quite easy :-)
[Via Mike Chambers]
Dreamweaver is a tool that has been in my toolbox since its 1.0 version. From the start Dreamweaver was a lot better than its competitors. I could easily mention a lot of HTML editors that never have gotten as close to rendering good HTML as Dreamweaver. But the tool was far from perfect.
John made me aware of the work of the Dreamweaver Task Force, which is a project of The Web Standards Project (WaSP).
WaSP worked together with Macromedia on the latest version of their HTML editor, Dreamweaver MX. Although the pages at WaSP does not go into any evalutation of each of the objectives for the Dreamweaver Task Force, it does spesify the primary and secondary objectives that the taskforce had when working with Macromedia and the Dreamweaver developers. And it seems like they are reasonably happy with the results.
To me Dreamweaver MX has become an even better and more important tool, and with the inclusion of Homesite, its going to become on of the most used tools in my toolset in the years to come.
[Via JD on MX]
Macromedia has released an SDK that allows search engines and developers to parse SWF files and extract text and links.
The FAQ states that MM are working with a number of companies but no announcements yet.
Atomz Search and Google are two of the search engines I know that already are harvesting content from SWF files. Google so far has only extracted links from SWF files, but might be tempted to add more search capabilities to their search engine. The question is how easy it is to find and structure to the text in the SWF files.
[Update]:
John Dowdell has some intersting comments about SWF and search engines. Especially to those that might think that this is the solution for all their search engine problems.
Even with plain text content you just don't dump it out there and hope it gets indexed as you wish -- if you care about such things, you optimize the page to be recognized by various engines under the desired searches. With SWF you'd do the same thing with the HTML page holding the SWF.
[Via Flash Blog via Mike Chambers]
The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI) has published its white paper entitled "Opening the Open Source Debate". A white paper I have commented on before, especially the funding of AdTI is interesting, this to me is obviously a white paper paid for in full by Microsoft.
David Skoll of Roaring Penguin Software has written a very interesting rebutal to the whitepaper, more or less taking the whole white paper apart. Microsoft might want to have their money back for this one..
Roaring Penguin comments on the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution's white paper.
Another device with Flash support on the market.
Phillip Torrone wrote me to tell me about a very cool new device from Verizon. Its called Thera, and it supports Flash. Phillip has put up a page with pictures and a little information about the device.
Thera is a PDA with Phone (or vice versa), and as far as I can tell, its only available in the US. I have to admit that the information about the device was kind of scarse on the Verizon pages.
