Re: [flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
- Original Message - From: brucewhealton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 3:32 AM Subject: [flexcoders] Re: Couple questions Paul, Thanks for the tip. I wonder if the AS 3.0/Flex library includes any components that would work as slides players. My flex builder application is having problems when I try to pull up the help files/documents. So, would you know of where I could go to find info. on what is available in terms of components and such... even if I had to extend something that is probably better than starting from scratch if something close to what I need already exists. If it does, I don't know of a component out there to control converted powerpoint slides. The problem is that currently these coverters target a different flash virtual machine to that used for AS3/Flex and as such there is only a small market for this kind of bespoke application. In practice the slide converters come with a slide player solution of their own and their target is end users rather than custom component developers. I gave up trying to control my slides from AS3 and coded the solution using AS2. Sorry, but I can't donate the code. You can get hold of the flex help info online : http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/ (google is your friend) It's not the most trivial thing to write a custom slide player if your having to find everything out from scratch. Couldn't you just go with a slide player that's shipped with many converters? Anyway, good luck. Paul Bruce --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Paul Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bruce, there are a mass of powerpoint to flash converters out there - google is your friend. The one I've worked with produced fairly large files and the output is an AS1/AS2 swf. If I were writing a slide player, I'd probably use Flex, though for a slide player it could probably just as well be all in actionscript so Flash or Flex is neither here nor there. Paul -- Flexcoders Mailing List FAQ: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/files/flexcodersFAQ.txt Alternative FAQ location: https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=942dbdc8-e469-446f-b4cf-1e62079f6847 Search Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders%40yahoogroups.comYahoo! Groups Links
[flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
Well, it seems to me that a slide presentation need not look like and behave just like Powerpoint, right? That just occurred to me while I was reading the messages here. Perhaps all that is needed is an existing component with the ability to move from one display to the next, one slide as it were. It might be a great deal of work though to make the component look nice, like one might see with Powerpoint applications. What do you think? Bruce --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Paul Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: Paul Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 9:19 AM Subject: Re: [flexcoders] Couple questions Bruce, there are a mass of powerpoint to flash converters out there - google is your friend. The one I've worked with produced fairly large files and the output is an AS1/AS2 swf. If I were writing a slide player, I'd probably use Flex, though for a slide player it could probably just as well be all in actionscript so Flash or Flex is neither here nor there. One thing I should add - when I was researching powerpoint to flash converters a few months back - none of them produced AS3 swfs, so controlling the playback from Flex (or Flash AS3) is a little problematic - you'd need an intemediary AS2 swf to talk between the runtime systems. Some of the converters include players for playing back the converted files. Eventually I wrote a player using AS2. Good luck. Paul Paul - Original Message - From: brucewhealton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 6:01 AM Subject: [flexcoders] Couple questions Hello all, I had a few questions, where I could use some suggestions or opinions and ideas. One is regarding Powerpoint-like presentations online. If you were going to do something like this, would you use Flash or Flex - maybe these are not even the best choices? Are there extensions for Flash or Flex to convert a powerpoint file to something that would play in the Flash Player? Actually, I'm not sure if there even are any extensions for Flex like there are for other Adobe products, but I bet there are. Next, I noticed that there is a nice AIR application for reading Flexcoder messages. I'm only aware of one, the only additional thing I'd want is the ability to post to the group from the AIR application. Can anyone suggest some good sources for a variety of AIR applications? Lastly, are there any script collections of free or commercial Flex MXML/Actionscript applications that one could check out, such as what there are at http://hotscripts.com and other similar places. thanks, Bruce -- Flexcoders Mailing List FAQ: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/files/flexcodersFAQ.txt Alternative FAQ location: https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=942dbdc8-e469-446f-b4cf-1e62079f6847 Search Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders%40yahoogroups.comYahoo! Groups Links -- Flexcoders Mailing List FAQ: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/files/flexcodersFAQ.txt Alternative FAQ location: https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=942dbdc8-e469-446f-b4cf-1e62079f6847 Search Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders%40yahoogroups.comYahoo! Groups Links
Re: [flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
- Original Message - From: brucewhealton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2008 1:40 AM Subject: [flexcoders] Re: Couple questions Well, it seems to me that a slide presentation need not look like and behave just like Powerpoint, right? That just occurred to me while I was reading the messages here. Perhaps all that is needed is an existing component with the ability to move from one display to the next, one slide as it were. Making a slide show type program is fairly easy. It might be a great deal of work though to make the component look nice, like one might see with Powerpoint applications. What do you think? LOL depends what you mean by nice. The strength of powerpoint is in laying out screen components on a page with good control over their appearance and the availability of canned transformations and effects to add interest. That coupled with an ability to use layout templates and control how a presentation plays back and can be printed out makes Powerpoint what it is. Replicating all that in Flex is a lot of work. Making something similar is certainly doable. Making a tool that does a targetted subset of that is very doable, but it won't be powerpoint. Most of the thread has concentrated on converting powerpoint slides to run in flash, which is a completely different proposition from making a powerpoint-like tool in flex. What exactly are your goals here? Paul Bruce --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Paul Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: Paul Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 9:19 AM Subject: Re: [flexcoders] Couple questions Bruce, there are a mass of powerpoint to flash converters out there - google is your friend. The one I've worked with produced fairly large files and the output is an AS1/AS2 swf. If I were writing a slide player, I'd probably use Flex, though for a slide player it could probably just as well be all in actionscript so Flash or Flex is neither here nor there. One thing I should add - when I was researching powerpoint to flash converters a few months back - none of them produced AS3 swfs, so controlling the playback from Flex (or Flash AS3) is a little problematic - you'd need an intemediary AS2 swf to talk between the runtime systems. Some of the converters include players for playing back the converted files. Eventually I wrote a player using AS2. Good luck. Paul Paul - Original Message - From: brucewhealton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 6:01 AM Subject: [flexcoders] Couple questions Hello all, I had a few questions, where I could use some suggestions or opinions and ideas. One is regarding Powerpoint-like presentations online. If you were going to do something like this, would you use Flash or Flex - maybe these are not even the best choices? Are there extensions for Flash or Flex to convert a powerpoint file to something that would play in the Flash Player? Actually, I'm not sure if there even are any extensions for Flex like there are for other Adobe products, but I bet there are. Next, I noticed that there is a nice AIR application for reading Flexcoder messages. I'm only aware of one, the only additional thing I'd want is the ability to post to the group from the AIR application. Can anyone suggest some good sources for a variety of AIR applications? Lastly, are there any script collections of free or commercial Flex MXML/Actionscript applications that one could check out, such as what there are at http://hotscripts.com and other similar places. thanks, Bruce -- Flexcoders Mailing List FAQ: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/files/flexcodersFAQ.txt Alternative FAQ location: https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=942dbdc8-e469-446f-b4cf-1e62079f6847 Search Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders%40yahoogroups.comYahoo! Groups Links -- Flexcoders Mailing List FAQ: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/files/flexcodersFAQ.txt Alternative FAQ location: https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=942dbdc8-e469-446f-b4cf-1e62079f6847 Search Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders%40yahoogroups.comYahoo! Groups Links -- Flexcoders Mailing List FAQ: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/files/flexcodersFAQ.txt Alternative FAQ location: https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=942dbdc8-e469-446f-b4cf-1e62079f6847 Search Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders%40yahoogroups.comYahoo! Groups Links
Re: [flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
Somehow I missed this discussion, but I might be able to offer some relevant info. First off, I am the Sr. Team Lead of Flash/Flex development at www.flypaper.com. We created a product that creates presentation slides (we call them stories) that run in a Flex/AS3 runtime on the web. The application will also import PowerPoint slides for output. I don't know which conversion library we are using (one of our C# devs implemented it) but if our product isn't the solution you are looking for (give it a try, there is a 30 free trial) I would be happy to offer what guidance I can. Steve On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Paul Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: brucewhealton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2008 1:40 AM Subject: [flexcoders] Re: Couple questions Well, it seems to me that a slide presentation need not look like and behave just like Powerpoint, right? That just occurred to me while I was reading the messages here. Perhaps all that is needed is an existing component with the ability to move from one display to the next, one slide as it were. Making a slide show type program is fairly easy. It might be a great deal of work though to make the component look nice, like one might see with Powerpoint applications. What do you think? LOL depends what you mean by nice. The strength of powerpoint is in laying out screen components on a page with good control over their appearance and the availability of canned transformations and effects to add interest. That coupled with an ability to use layout templates and control how a presentation plays back and can be printed out makes Powerpoint what it is. Replicating all that in Flex is a lot of work. Making something similar is certainly doable. Making a tool that does a targetted subset of that is very doable, but it won't be powerpoint. Most of the thread has concentrated on converting powerpoint slides to run in flash, which is a completely different proposition from making a powerpoint-like tool in flex. What exactly are your goals here? Paul Bruce --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Paul Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: Paul Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 9:19 AM Subject: Re: [flexcoders] Couple questions Bruce, there are a mass of powerpoint to flash converters out there - google is your friend. The one I've worked with produced fairly large files and the output is an AS1/AS2 swf. If I were writing a slide player, I'd probably use Flex, though for a slide player it could probably just as well be all in actionscript so Flash or Flex is neither here nor there. One thing I should add - when I was researching powerpoint to flash converters a few months back - none of them produced AS3 swfs, so controlling the playback from Flex (or Flash AS3) is a little problematic - you'd need an intemediary AS2 swf to talk between the runtime systems. Some of the converters include players for playing back the converted files. Eventually I wrote a player using AS2. Good luck. Paul Paul - Original Message - From: brucewhealton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 6:01 AM Subject: [flexcoders] Couple questions Hello all, I had a few questions, where I could use some suggestions or opinions and ideas. One is regarding Powerpoint-like presentations online. If you were going to do something like this, would you use Flash or Flex - maybe these are not even the best choices? Are there extensions for Flash or Flex to convert a powerpoint file to something that would play in the Flash Player? Actually, I'm not sure if there even are any extensions for Flex like there are for other Adobe products, but I bet there are. Next, I noticed that there is a nice AIR application for reading Flexcoder messages. I'm only aware of one, the only additional thing I'd want is the ability to post to the group from the AIR application. Can anyone suggest some good sources for a variety of AIR applications? Lastly, are there any script collections of free or commercial Flex MXML/Actionscript applications that one could check out, such as what there are at http://hotscripts.com and other similar places. thanks, Bruce -- Flexcoders Mailing List FAQ: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/files/flexcodersFAQ.txt Alternative FAQ location: https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=942dbdc8-e469-446f-b4cf-1e62079f6847 Search Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexcoders%40yahoogroups.comYahoo! Groups Links
[flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
Thanks for the tip. I was looking at some Flex components - custom ones that are free, for presenting a Photo Slide Show. It might be doable to instead of displaying images, displaying text. That option probably would be not very practical - too much work for a result that isn't as good as a PowerPoint presentation. It's simple enough to publish a PowerPoint presentation on the web but I just wanted to see if there were any flex components/containers that would be very professional looking and sophisticated. Bruce --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Haykel BEN JEMIA [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For online presentations you could try http://www.sliderocket.com . It's a commercial service but if you will be putting regularly presentations online, I think this will help you a lot to create great ones! On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 7:01 AM, brucewhealton [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Hello all, I had a few questions, where I could use some suggestions or opinions and ideas. One is regarding Powerpoint-like presentations online. If you were going to do something like this, would you use Flash or Flex - maybe these are not even the best choices? Are there extensions for Flash or Flex to convert a powerpoint file to something that would play in the Flash Player? Actually, I'm not sure if there even are any extensions for Flex like there are for other Adobe products, but I bet there are. Next, I noticed that there is a nice AIR application for reading Flexcoder messages. I'm only aware of one, the only additional thing I'd want is the ability to post to the group from the AIR application. Can anyone suggest some good sources for a variety of AIR applications? Lastly, are there any script collections of free or commercial Flex MXML/Actionscript applications that one could check out, such as what there are at http://hotscripts.com and other similar places. thanks, Bruce -- Haykel Ben Jemia Allmas Web RIA Development http://www.allmas-tn.com
[flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Amy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, brucewhealton bruce@ wrote: Hello all, I had a few questions, where I could use some suggestions or opinions and ideas. One is regarding Powerpoint-like presentations online. If you were going to do something like this, would you use Flash or Flex - maybe these are not even the best choices? You might want to look at Captivate. HTH; Amy Amy, I had actually been thinking of that myself. I mean it occurred to me after I posted this thread initially. Bruce
[flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Paul Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: brucewhealton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2008 1:40 AM Subject: [flexcoders] Re: Couple questions Replicating all that in Flex is a lot of work. Making something similar is certainly doable. Making a tool that does a targetted subset of that is very doable, but it won't be powerpoint. Most of the thread has concentrated on converting powerpoint slides to run in flash, which is a completely different proposition from making a powerpoint-like tool in flex. What exactly are your goals here? Paul Good question there, Paul. I think my goal was to utilize Flex... to see its capabilities... to learn and move forward with the use of Flex. Theoretically, I thought that it would have been something that Flex might have been able to do. With all the layouts, components, containers, controls and such, I thought that maybe Flex had something that would do this. Some time back in the history of this discussion, I came to a conclusion. Can Flex do this better than Powerpoint? No. I agree it is possible to design and develop a solution but that approach is not efficient. Bruce
[flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Steve Mathews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Somehow I missed this discussion, but I might be able to offer some relevant info. First off, I am the Sr. Team Lead of Flash/Flex development at www.flypaper.com. We created a product that creates presentation slides (we call them stories) that run in a Flex/AS3 runtime on the web. The application will also import PowerPoint slides for output. I don't know which conversion library we are using (one of our C# devs implemented it) but if our product isn't the solution you are looking for (give it a try, there is a 30 free trial) I would be happy to offer what guidance I can. Steve That looks pretty impressive. It looks like a great application. It reminds me a bit of the FlexBook application that is on the quietlyscheming website. Bruce
[flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
Paul, Thanks for the tip. I wonder if the AS 3.0/Flex library includes any components that would work as slides players. My flex builder application is having problems when I try to pull up the help files/documents. So, would you know of where I could go to find info. on what is available in terms of components and such... even if I had to extend something that is probably better than starting from scratch if something close to what I need already exists. Bruce --- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Paul Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bruce, there are a mass of powerpoint to flash converters out there - google is your friend. The one I've worked with produced fairly large files and the output is an AS1/AS2 swf. If I were writing a slide player, I'd probably use Flex, though for a slide player it could probably just as well be all in actionscript so Flash or Flex is neither here nor there. Paul
[flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, brucewhealton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello all, I had a few questions, where I could use some suggestions or opinions and ideas. One is regarding Powerpoint-like presentations online. If you were going to do something like this, would you use Flash or Flex - maybe these are not even the best choices? You might want to look at Captivate. HTH; Amy
[flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Paul Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Original Message - From: Paul Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 9:19 AM Subject: Re: [flexcoders] Couple questions Bruce, there are a mass of powerpoint to flash converters out there - google is your friend. The one I've worked with produced fairly large files and the output is an AS1/AS2 swf. If I were writing a slide player, I'd probably use Flex, though for a slide player it could probably just as well be all in actionscript so Flash or Flex is neither here nor there. One thing I should add - when I was researching powerpoint to flash converters a few months back - none of them produced AS3 swfs, so controlling the playback from Flex (or Flash AS3) is a little problematic - you'd need an intemediary AS2 swf to talk between the runtime systems. Some of the converters include players for playing back the converted files. Eventually I wrote a player using AS2. There's a public Beta of Captivate 4 going on now. I would suspect that this version uses AS3. HTH; Amy
Re: [flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
- Original Message - From: Amy [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2008 4:29 PM Subject: [flexcoders] Re: Couple questions snip One thing I should add - when I was researching powerpoint to flash converters a few months back - none of them produced AS3 swfs, so controlling the playback from Flex (or Flash AS3) is a little problematic - you'd need an intemediary AS2 swf to talk between the runtime systems. Some of the converters include players for playing back the converted files. Eventually I wrote a player using AS2. There's a public Beta of Captivate 4 going on now. I would suspect that this version uses AS3. HTH; Amy Thanks Amy, I'll check it out. Paul
Re: [flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
There's a public Beta of Captivate 4 going on now. I would suspect that this version uses AS3. There is, Amy? Where? I just checked Adobe Labs and I don't see anything. Nancy
[flexcoders] Re: Couple questions
--- In flexcoders@yahoogroups.com, Nancy Gill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There's a public Beta of Captivate 4 going on now. I would suspect that this version uses AS3. There is, Amy? Where? I just checked Adobe Labs and I don't see anything. http://blogs.adobe.com/silke.fleischer/2008/08/adobe_captivate_4_beta_co ming.html Ok, I thought the beta was already public, but it looks like it's in the process. I think now is the time to sign up, though, if you're interested. HTH; Amy
