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The new version of my Easy SWF Plugin for WordPress is out today!

There were lots of requests to add background and included Flash size settings. And this update adds just that :) Continue reading! (more…)

Adobe labs FINALLY released the Flex Builder 2.0 for Mac!

I was really looking forward for the technology to come to Mac OS X, as it, potentially, allows to create absolutely stunning web-based applications. There are some sample apps which use the technology, so you can see it in action yourself. There's even ain introduction on integrating Flex 2 and Ruby on Rails which I am absolutely DYING to try, since Ruby on Rails is my current favourite hot technology (I'm currently building a Rails-based blog system at work, and working with Rails, after, of course, you learn how to use the bloody mega-framework, is a pure joy).

So what basically is Flex 2? Well I can't say I'm an expert as I haven't really touched the technology myself, but the idea is to use rich Flash-based framework called Flex, to build industrial-strength, "normal", "desktop-like" - you say it - applications. Flex allows to build standard application interface, including standard UI elements like buttons and lists, and windows, as well as support such standard operations as drag and drop, as well as allows to access databases etc.. So basically, a Flex application is functionally indistinguishable from an ordinary desktop application, sans the interface is of course consists of Flash widgets.

Flex applications' target is mostly Web, or at least that is what I think after looking at the Flex web site. You can build, say, an online shop entirely in Flex, with cool animations done without any effort. It's all cool and all, but there is also a problem - your Flex-based online shop contents won't be processed by any existing search engine (hey, search engines don't even understand Javascript at current stage - so you can basically forget about them parsing Flash-based content).

Well there are lots of thing to consider, but I'm sure there are plenty of uses for the technology, so I going to happily jump on the Flex bandwagon and probably will share some thoughs and info about progress in this blog (if there is anything to write about, that is :)

The new version fixes problems with resolving local path to .swf in situations when WordPress is not installed at site's root (ie: http://mydomain.com/wordpress, etc)

Get the info and download the new version at this link.

I have updated the EasySWF plugin to version 1.0.1 today. New version contains exactly 2 fixes:

• a fix for reading dimensions of .swf file hosted on local filesystem of the server, in case when server doesn't set the DOCUMENT_ROOT environment variable (thanks to Michael Small for pointing out the problem and helping in resolving it!)
• updated Flash generation code so that it is automatically "activated" in IE for Windows (ie no need to click on Flash in order to be able to click on links inside it, if there are any)

You can download the update here.

More info on the plugin is available here.

There are several plugins to display Flash content for WordPress, but they don't make it easy for a user to insert Flash. They ask you to put some weird tags into your post, set Flash dimensions.. Well… NO MORE OF THIS PAIN! :) (cool CM huh ;) (more…)