Saturday, June 4, 2011

Flash XML: Interactive Maps

An interactive map explorer on S E Lindberg.com  allows you to correlate the events, characters, and geographies of Lords of Dyscrasia.  The Flash widget was originally designed to explore conventional maps of cities, but was easily adapted for the Land and Underworld of Lords of Dyscrasia; a magnifier and navigation bars allow for easy zooming and panning; the flashing dots are locations with pop-up descriptions and images--> just click on these to show a pop-up image and description.


Here is a live demonstration:


Another Flash widget enables the Dyscrasia Museum browser:  Once there, just click on the square "Folder" icons and get a pop-up of images and details for each character:
Gallery browser
Pop-up for Doctor Grave's Info
Flash Widget Market
To HTML5 radicals (Flash-nay-sayers?), please note that the text content and images are (1) searchable by search engines and (2) easy-to-update outside of Flash since all content is external to the SWF file and is referenced via a simple XML file.  The process is easy: locate a SWF interface you like from online markets, spend ~$5 - $15 for a royalty-free version (generally), and update the XML text and supply your images.  You'll get a cool web interface with little coding.  If desired, most widgets come with the original Flash files, so you can custom them if needed (and you own Flash); otherwise, most can just insert the SWF widget into their HTML, WIKI site, etc.

I went to Activeden.net  (formerly Flashden.net), one of Envato.com's marketplaces: Audiojungle.net has royalty-free sound effects and music for sale....and other markets cover motion effects, web and blog templates, tutorials, and more.  Thanks to web guru Martin Nieuwoudt who mentored me on web strategies!