We would like to announce that Down the Foxhole will be taking a “holiday hiatus” over the festive season and will be back in 2010. The wait will definitely be worth it however as we’re going to be changing the format of all our blogs in the new year. Meanwhile, site news and announcements will continue to be posted right here on the existing blog.
Flash Farewell
On a personal note, I would also like to announce that this will be my final ActiveDen blog post. I’ve been blogging here on ActiveDen pretty much every week day for the past 8 months and it has been an absolute honor, I’ve enjoyed every single minute of it! I would like to thank everyone who has stopped by and read each blog post, commented, written to me and liaised with me personally, and supported the blog during my residency. I also want to thank ActiveDen site manager Lance for the opportunity of blogging for ActiveDen, it’s been brilliant working with you, Lance!
My favorite part of the blog has always been writing about and promoting all the outstanding files you guys produce and sell on ActiveDen: Features such as Under the Radar, Author Salute and the ActiveDen Files of the Week roundup. It’s also been awesome to get to know more about authors via the interview series we also ran on Down the Foxhole. Hopefully, these type of articles have helped promote and expose your terrific work a little more.
Farewell fellow Flash fans, and Down the Foxhole will see you again in the new year!
Never fear, the ActiveDen Files of the Week are here! Here’s another roundup of all the sensational stock Flash files uploaded to ActiveDen in the past 7 days. Festive seasonal files are starting to creep into the ActiveDen library now that Christmas is approaching so if you haven’t started planning for those kind of files yet, you’d better hurry, there’s less than 28 days until Christmas Day! Files this week include some 3D preloaders, a shoot-em up space game, some cool audio tools, and some very well designed image banner rotators. Congratulations to all the authors whose work below has been selected and featured!
The quest to recreate 3D objects and interfaces and display them in a Web browser has been made all the easier because of Flash and software libraries such as Papervision3D. Here on ActiveDen, authors have been creating and uploading 3D Web sites, image galleries, carousels and interfaces for several years, selling thousands of files along the way.
We’ve looked through our entire library of stock Flash files and have picked out some of our favorite and most impressive 3D files that are available to purchase from ActiveDen. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of some of the screenshots below: Be sure to click on them to view the full previews to see how effective and impressive images, videos and other content can look, all of which can be manipulated and customized by the user.
We have amazing authors regularly uploading outstanding files to ActiveDen. With almost 9,000 files already on ActiveDen at the time of writing, it’s important to not only make your items stand out amongst the competition, but it’s also important to make yourself stand out amongst the crowd. Why not check to see if you’re doing everything you can to maximize your opportunities to make profit, contribute to the marketplace in a positive way and lead the way? Here’s our guide to becoming an even more successful ActiveDen author, no matter if you’re a brand-new author, or an author that has been around for years.
ActiveTuts+, the “sister” Web site of ActiveDen, 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 ActiveDen we will provide a roundup of all the previous week’s tutorials from ActiveTuts+ as a reminder to brush-up on your Flash skills or to learn something new.
Another mighty fine collection of stock Flash files uploaded to ActiveDen this week, there were so many to choose from! With so many rotating image banners and preloaders already available, it’s interesting to see how some developers are starting to think outside the box and create original files, features or take an old concept and give it an entirely new spin in order to make their new work stand out. Take the Jellyfish Clock for example and the XML Text Scroller with start-in effect. Both old concepts, but with a fresh new spin. So check out all the files below which demonstrate either originality, usefulness, fantastic design, or all of the above! If your file has made it into the list, congratulations, your uploads to ActiveDen really caught our eye this week.
Twitter is everywhere on the Web. People are using it to keep in touch with friends, to keep abreast of specialized industry news, businesses are using it to find new customers and interact with them online, and it has already rapidly become a quick and convenient way to communicate. So it was only a matter of time before Twitter worked its way into Flash files.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways Twitter can be used with Flash both on ActiveDen and around the Web. But to start off, let’s examine a couple of very useful APIs Flash developers can use to quickly pull in and manipulate Twitter data.
Performance improvements to faciliate multi-touch and gestures on mobile devices
Improvements to mass storage device recognition and integration
Peer-to-peer networking
UDP networking
Ability to use Adobe AIR 2 to extend applications further with platform-specific native code.
For a more visual overview of what’s new in AIR 2, check out the Adobe MAX 2009 clip below featuring Adobe’s very own Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Lynch:
For more info on AIR 2 and to download the beta, visit Adobe Labs.
Flash Player 10.1
The new 10.1 beta release of Flash Player is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux. A beta is expected for Palm webOS later this year. Here’s an overview of what you can expect from the latest public beta of Flash Player:
Flash Player will be available on smartphones and other Internet-connected mobile devices, doubling the number of operating systems content can reach.
Performance improvements for graphic and video acceleration.
Improved rendering, scripting, memory utilization, start-up time, battery and CPU optimizations.
New global error handler enables developers to write a single handler to process all runtime errors that weren’t part of a try/catch statement. Improvements to application reliability and user experience by catching and handling unexpected runtime errors and present custom error messages.
Mobile-ready features including support for multi-touch, gestures, mobile input models, and accelerometer.
Expanded options for high quality media delivery.
New HTTP streaming and content protection features via Adobe Flash Access: Premium audio and video content can be securely delivered within the browser.
ActiveTuts+, the “sister” Web site of ActiveDen, 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 ActiveDen we will provide a roundup of all the previous week’s tutorials from ActiveTuts+ as a reminder to brush-up on your Flash skills or to learn something new.
It’s that time again, where does time go?! I’ve picked out the best files uploaded to ActiveDen from the past 7 days and we have another awesome collection of well designed and useful files! We’ve had quite a few games uploaded this week, including an incredible jigsaw puzzle game by a brand new author called Savorks, that’s a great way to start your ActiveDen journey with your file being featured in our Files of the Week roundup! Perennial favorite Oxlylus has also been busy with a multitude of uploads this week which may explain why the Oxylus Flash crew have leapfrogged into second spot in the all-time top authors chart. Congratulations to all the authors whose work is featured below, your contributions to ActiveDen this week really caught our eye!
