UNC-CH Information Technology Services

Webmasters to learn about Adobe Flash

The next Webmasters meeting will feature Jay Almers, Web designer and developer for the School of Journalism, presenting on accessing data-driven objects in Adobe Flash. The meeting will be held on Thursday, June 5, at 2 p.m. in ITS Manning 5102.

For years, Flash has been a sought-after commodity in the world of Web site design and development. Now that the acceptance rate of Flash is substantially higher, it is everywhere - from full-blown sites, to banner advertisements, to media players or simple navigational components. Flash is being used by an increasingly large number of content providers to deliver high-quality rich media to their visitors.

Unless Web developers have kept up with the advancement of Flash and ActionScript technologies, they may be unaware of what they can do and how to take advantage of them. Almers will describe how Web designers can extend Flash objects by loading data from an external source, keeping file sizes small while providing the ability to modify content at will, without having to recompile Flash animation every time they want to make a change.

To demonstrate data-driven Flash objects in the real world, Almers will work with a Flash Video (FLV) player that loads its content from an external source and will be easily updateable. Additionally, he will demo a few methods available for providing the player with its data.

Almers recently posted a tutorial describing data-driven Flash animations on the Webmasters site.

UNC-Chapel Hill Webmasters meets monthly to discuss issues that affect webmasters across campus. Any UNC-Chapel Hill faculty or staff interested in participating can attend the meeting and/or join the listserv.