I keep wondering to myself, as we continually raise the bar on quality and only accept the very best files on FlashDen, if the FD Files of the Week will simply be every single file we publish each week?! What an interesting thought! 
We’ve got a bumper collection of outstanding files this week, so sit back and enjoy the highlights from this week’s files on FlashDen. Congratulations to all the authors whose files are featured below. Keep-up the awesome work!
He’s a top ten author, he has attained gold badge level ($50,000 – $100,000 sales), and he even has time to review files for FlashDen as a reviewer! SaafiDesign’s portfolio is a wonderfully designed affair of video players, images viewers, news readers, menus and much, much more. A diverse treat of multimedia magic! Let’s find out more about SaafiDesign!
Hello, I am Sher Ali (aka SaafiDesign/wes across envato marketplaces) and I’m a 25 year old male. I live in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. I am a freelance flash developer, CEO of my new startup company “Lucid Studios”, a husband and a father of a 13 month old son.
I use Flash not only for living but also for pursuing my master’s degree in Computer Sciences.
I have been using Flash since version 5. I don’t remember the exact site from where I came to FlashDen but in those days, a Chinese author (chipiano) was one of the top selling authors here at FlashDen and that made me think that FlashDen is the perfect opportunity (to earn passive income) which I wanted for a long time so after couple of months I started selling Flash files at Flashden and I’m still selling here!
Almost all of the files in my portfolio were built solely for FlashDen but few of them were part of larger projects which I tweaked for selling at FlashDen.
I used to visit thefwa.com a lot to get inspired but not now due to lack of time. I try to come up with files which I think will be very helpful for wide variety of buyers.
After opting to be a Flash programmer, I follow the reverse order of the actual process i.e. first I code and then tweak the design with many iterations, get feedback from friends and then tweak again to make the file better and better. For non-FlashDen projects I mostly code the projects because I get the designs from the clients either designed by themselves or by another designer.
For branding I am not very consistent and change my profile page, file icons etc. whenever I get bord of them!
I had good plans to market my files like having a general dedicated website (lucidcomponents.net) for all of my FlashDen files and a specific website for my events calendar file, but I have not managed to get around to doing that yet. I have been using Adobe Exchange however to market my files.
Learn through experience and follow your own best practices. For example, one of my best practices is to implement the feature of passing xml file path through flashvars in all of my new files because majority of the buyers ask for that feature.
My favorite authors are dabamol for having a gold badge with a very minimalistic portfolio, triworks for their top quality work and of course RimV for his stunning 3D files.
Of course dynamic xml events calendar (AS2 version) which brought me up to the gold badge level very quickly. There are many events calendar files on FlashDen but mine is one of the more attractive and interactive concepts and has a lot of features which others don’t.
To have a separate testing site for testing new features and sending emails to authors whenever they change their account information to avoid any kind of illegal access to someone’s account at the right time.
When I am not building Flash files I try to play with my son, get some extra sleep and spend some time with my family and friends.
Lee Brimelow, Platform Evangelist at Adobe and author of TheFlashBlog has kindly created a wonderful opportunity for all Adobe and Flash users to submit questions to him. Lee will pick out some of the questions and respond to them via video in a vehicle known as Just Ask Us.
Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to directly ask an Adobe employee a question you’ve always wanted to ask. It could be about Adobe, it could be about Flash or Flex or ActionScript – just about anything Adobe related. This is such a really cool opportunity that I may have already submitted my own question… or seven. 
But please hurry. Anyone with questions for Adobe and Lee only have until Friday, July 31st to submit questions.
Don’t worry if Lee doesn’t get around to answering your question – you always have Dear Adobe to fall back on.
We have been getting a LOT of requests from buyers wanting a licence to use files in products for resale, so we’ve made one!
The licence is called the Single Use Conditional Resale Permitted Licence ["Conditional Resale"]. You can read about it here:
http://flashden.net/legal/licences
Right now every author is automatically opted-out, so you will need to opt in if you wish to sell your files under this licence (see instructions below).
The Conditional Resale licence allows a file to be used in an item for resale, and it’s priced at 50 times the cost of a standard single use licence.
So for instance, you could buy this licence if you wanted to:
1. Put a GraphicRiver graphic on a t-shirt for sale in a store.
2. Put a FlashDen preloader into a Flash theme for sale.
3. Put a VideoHive video and an AudioJungle loop into software that would allow people to make their own custom video with music.
4. Put a ThemeForest theme into software that would allow people to create intranets.
How Do I Opt-In?
If you wish to offer your file under this licence, all you need to do is:
1. Go to your Account page.
2. Go the the Edit tab.
3. Click on Item Licences.
4. Click the boxes next to the licence name to opt-in.
5. Press Save!
If you have any questions support will be happy to answer them!
A great stock file will always sell well, but it’s naive and a missed opportunity to think that all your stock files will sell well without any extra promotion. Following-up on our previous post about Adobe Exchange, using Hot Scripts is another great way to promote your FlashDen files.
UPDATE: Please note, we previously recommended adding your FlashDen referral codes to all the files/links you submit to HotScripts. Ahmad Permessur, Product Manager of HotScripts.com has kindly pointed out to use that this is actually not permissable. So by all means continue to submit your FlashDen items to Hot Scripts, but please do not add any referral codes to your links. We recommend you go back and edit the links to any files you may have already submitted. We thank Ahmad for pointing this out to us and we apologize to anyone for any misinformation and inconvenience caused.
Here’s how to upload your FlashDen files to Hot Scripts in order to obtain more file exposure and drive traffic back to your file on FlashDen in the hope of increased sales.
So here we go, here’s how quick and easy it is to upload to Hot Scripts:
The first thing to do on Hot Scripts is to register an account. It’s super quick and easy. Register here. You will then receive an e-mail asking to confirm your registration. Once you’ve confirmed your new account, log on.
Once you’re logged in, there is button in the top left corner of the Web page that says “Submit a New Listing!”. Click it.
It probably goes without saying, but choose Flash as the main category you want to submit your file to, and then choose FLA Archives as the second option.
All the fields in this section are self-explanatory. Add the Name and Description of your FlashDen file, just as it appears on FlashDen (but limited to 1,000 characters), and also add a brief Summary – a sentence or two just to give an overview of your file. This should be less descriptive than your main description and should not exceed 255 characters.
The Site URL, Download URL and Demo URL should all be the same – your FlashDen item page. Please note, you are not allowed to add your FlashDen referral link to the links you submit as this is against the Hot Scripts terms and conditions.
Complete this section by filling out the Author name (your real name), the Version number of your file (for example, 1.0), and then select an option from the dropdown box to choose the size of your Flash file. If your file supports a database, check all the database options that apply, or in most cases, you will just need to check “None”. Then select the Supported Platforms for your Flash file. You typically only have to select Linux, Mac OSX and Windows here, as that’s where Flash Player is predominantly used.
We’re almost there! The final step is to select a license. Choose “Commercial License” from the dropdown menu. There’s no need to add any other licenses. Add the price of your FlashDen file exactly as it is on your FlashDen item page (eg. 10.00 for “$10″) and choose Dollars as the currency. Finally, click the big red Submit button and that’s it! If you have made any errors, they will be highlighted for you in red. But if the submission was successful, you will get a green confirmation message:
And that’s it! You’ve just submitted your Flash file to Hot Scripts! Your file will eventually be reviewed (be prepared to wait depending on how much of a backlog there currently is). If accepted, your file will eventually appear in Hot Scripts! You can check on the status of all your submissions from the My Listings page.
Flashtuts+, the “sister” Web site of FlashDen, is part of the envato Tuts+ network, and features some of the best Flash, ActionScript and Flex tutorials on the Web in an easy-to-follow and engaging format.
Each week on FlashDen we will provide a roundup of all the previous week’s tutorials from Flashtuts+ as a reminder to brush-up on your Flash skills or to learn something new.
You can’t have that ‘Friday Feeling’ without the FlashDen Files of the Week! Twelve sensational files have been selected out of a pool of approximately fifty files accepted into our library this week. Congratulations to all the authors whose files made it into this week’s list, stellar work everyone! Do you have a favorite file out of the files below? Let us know in the comments!
FlashDen author lydian may be pretty new to FlashDen, but he has amassed over 1,000 sales in his first year as a member and currently resides in 88th position in the official FlashDen list of top selling authors. All of the files in his portfolio are visually engaging and very well designed and is definitely an up-and-coming author to look out for. His most recent file, the Flash Banner Creator and Rotator is one of the best selling files of last week and is sure to become an extremely popular file. So who is this up-and-coming ActionScript star? Let’s find out!
Hi everyone, I’m lydian, a 27 year old flash developer who lives in the beautiful country Turkey where the people are always warm and the food is always delicious. I live with my family and work as a freelance ActionScript developer. Here’s a picture of where I live:
I have been using Flash for about a year and before switching to Flash I was a hardcore Java Swing developer. I switched to ActionScript 3.0 after seeing no future in Java as a desktop development tool. It was pretty easy for me to get used to ActionScript since it has a very similar syntax with Java.
Creating nice screen components has always been a passion for me, when I first started developing in Flash, I was looking for a way to make money out of my early work. I found FlashDen with a simple Google search and impressed with the quality of the files here. At first, I didn’t expect to make a lot of money but it turned out to be a very good source of income. Lately, I have been putting more and more effort into FlashDen and everything has gone well so far.
I usually create my files from scratch, however, I always use AS3 classes and code blocks from my previous works. Doing this dramatically reduces the time required to develop a new file. Apart from that, I always try to put something new to every file that I create.
I surf the Web a lot. I regularly visit different design resources both for the desktop and Web applications. There are plenty of CSS design resources out on the net and I usually visit those Web sites. I also follow some design magazines such as Smashing Magazine and Web Designer Depot.
I start designing my files in Photoshop. Most of the designers start designing just by using a piece of paper and a pen, however, I don’t like using the paper much during the visual design process. I play a lot with the visual components, add one thing and remove another until I’m satisfied with the final look of the file. After this phase, I get a piece of paper and a pen, decide which constants, classes and code blocks I will use, then I open my code editor and start writing ActionScript code.
I haven’t done much until recently I started to use my logo on the file thumbnails. I also submit my files to some shareware websites such as Hot Scripts, Softpedia etc. Doing this certainly increases my search engine page rank. I’m also planning to launch a Web site to promote my files here on FlashDen.
Support your files. I know it’s really hard to give support for free, however, it could lead to more sales. Most of the buyers expect free support even though support is not mandatory and they really feel disappointed when they don’t get any support. Buyers buy more files from you when they’re satisfied with the quality of the support they get, that’s for sure.
Well, there are so many of them. A few of my favorite FlashDen authors are DigitalScience, bobocel, Triworks, RimV, jurgenV, VF, ranfirefly, MBMedia, wildwise, Webmarbles and PerryMason.
I think my best file so far is either the Dynamic Photo Gallery / Slideshow v2.0 or the XML Driven Horizontal Image Scroller.
I think FlashDen is on the right track. Everything has been fine lately. One thing though, it would be nice if FlashDen could delete some of the old files. Such as files without documentation or the files that don’t match the new criterias over here.
For fun, I like music a lot. If I find time, I play my midi keyboard and make music with FL Studio. I also like taking photographs and swimming. Watching documentary movies is also one of my favorite things to do. I’m a big fan of Discovery Channel and National Geographic.
Every week in the sidebar of the FlashDen blog, we’re going to bring you a new poll. Not only is it fun to participate, but it’s also great to see what everyone else is doing.
So, what did we learn this week? We learned that MichaelHejja’s XML editor v2 is the favorite of the top sellers and Oxylus’s Slick website is barely more popular than P&K’s Mirror Template. I think they’re all pretty cool.
The Common Questions series is exactly what it sounds like – a series of tutorials answering the most common questions asked by those who buy and use FlashDen files. These tutorials don’t require any knowledge of Flash. For more go to common questions.
If you’ve browsed FlashDen much, you’ve see the phrase “drag & drop” a lot. What that means is that you can just drag items from the Flash library right onto the stage and they’ll work.
Requirements:
You need Adobe Flash for this tutorial. If you don’t have Flash, watch or read this tutorial first.
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Down the Foxhole is the community blog of ActiveDen, an Envato marketplace. At ActiveDen you can buy or sell Adobe Flash and Flex files like preloaders, galleries, site templates and utilities. Files are created and sold by a huge community of authors from all over the world, helping to make it the biggest Flash library online!
You can also find ActiveDen
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