Jul 26
This is something that I came across a while back when I was working on a project that consisted of me having to create 71 FLA’s. Now the problem with creating having to create 71 separate FLA’s is that if you change the Document class that they all utilize, you have to re-publish all of them. Now depending on your computers hardware, what OS you are running, and which Flash CS version you are running, you may only be able to open up 4 to 8 FLA’s at once before Flash Professional crashes leaving you with nothing but frustration.
Well I did searching online for a way to do a batch publish of FLA’s and I found a decent amount of info on doing so using JSFL. But I was in a hurry and just glancing through all the info I could find, it seemed like a pain in the ass to setup and get working. That’s when I came across Greg Ferrell’s “A Better Batch Publisher” extension for Flash CS3. I had never before used extensions with any Adobe program so this was new for me. But from what I can tell, it is just a fancy plugin for Adobe products. This extension added a menu option under the Command file menu to Batch Publish. The options with this extension include selecting an entire folder of FLA’s and sub-folders of that one that might contain FLA’s. The other wonderful thing is that you can choose if it publishes the SWF only, uses the individual FLA publish settings, or you pick a folder to publish that FLA’s SWF to.
I can’t seem to find this online anymore, so I don’t know if this guy just doesn’t have a website or I just can’t find the right Greg Ferrell to give proper credit for making such an awesome extension for Flash. Thankfully I made a back-up for myself and I will share it with you from my server. You can download it here. Now if you noticed I said that it was made for Flash CS3. Don’t worry if you are running CS4 or CS5. I have tested it out on CS3, CS4, and CS5 on a Mac and it works with every version of Flash, CS3 and beyond so far. Now, I haven’t tested it on a Windows version of Flash, but I do not see why it wouldn’t work. If anyone ever finds Greg’s website or any web presence, let me know so I can give him the proper credit by linking to him. Thanks and enjoy.
Jun 01
If you are a hard core Mac OS X user, chances are you have heard of Quicksilver. Quicksilver is really hard to categorize as far as what kind of application it is, but if it is anything, it’s a glorified application launcher. Its faster then Spotlight in many cases when it comes to searching for an application that you want to launch. Quicksilver, with the use of plug-ins, can also open up folders, search the web, archive files, etc. Quicksilver can practically do anything and its designed so that your hands never have to leave the keyboard.
Well, now you have, to an extent, those features on Windows through an application called Launchy. This app is designed as an application and folder launcher and has support for plug-ins, which there are developers out there creating plug-ins for Launchy. Here is the description from Launchy’s website:
Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.
Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!
I haven’t explored it thoroughly yet, but from my initial use of it, there are a few little things that I don’t like about it. One thing is that you can’t set any preferences when it comes to setting the hotkey or any other preferences that deal with the application. With all that said, it is still definitely an application worth trying out for being more productive in Windows.
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May 15
So I have been trying out Windows Vista Ultimate for about a month now, and I have to say, like XP, it takes some getting used to but you eventually warm up to it. But for me to warm up to it, I had to do a good bit of customization. Some of those things included turning off that f***ing pop-up security message every time you doing a system change of some sort or installing an application. After you turn off the UAC security, you have to disable Windows warning messages that appear in in the Start Menu bar by the clock. If you don’t you will have a constant message basically saying that your security sucks and you need to fix it.
After I go through that, I disable the sidebar because to me, its a bit distracting. To be fair to Windows, I should note that I also disable Dashboard on the Mac OS. With all that said and done, using Windows Vista isn’t that bad for typical use. I haven’t pushed it as far as the design and development sides are concerned with Photoshop and Flash.
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