That's exactly the direction I want to take it now that our Research team has had a chance to analyze the deployed prototype (a "controller" swf).
I really like the idea of the "separate" app to manipulate the media. This was my stumbling block and gives me a lot to think about. I was trying to figure a way to do it all in Flash, but that really isn't necessary. If we built the layout/design application (in whatever language seemed most appropriate) it could save off the files (meta-data) needed for the individual swf that the controller would load and use to render. We would still have (for instance) a "frog" graphic in multiple sizes, etc that would be deployed... even though it was the same graphic originally... just scaled and such. This isn't ideal, but I think requiring Flash to do the manipulations every time would increase our render times outside the bounds of our project. We're on the cusp of deciding how to move forward now and I've been trying to get a few ideas that we could use to approach a Development shop with (we don't have the team required to build the tools, and I don't think have the time to build the team/skills). These are good thoughts, thanks Jason! I'm certainly still willing, and grateful, for any experience/success stories others might have too. Tj From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Merrill, Jason Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 11:26 AM To: Open Source Flash Mailing List Subject: Re: [osflash] Graphic assets in toolchain We do something similar, and I found a better approach (at least in our case) was to instead of creating 1000 different .swfs, create a single .swf which has descriptions of the media in it contained in an XML file. You only maintain one .swf that way. Our users use an application to design and manipulate the graphics in the .swf and then save out using a Webservice. The webservice updates the XML file for the "project". The .swf reads the XML which describes how the media looks and animates etc. We made an RIA app that creates mini Flash learning/job aid Flash "web sites" (to state it simply). This may not work in your case though if you want all the Flash IDE tools to render media in the .swf and don't have time to build tools to manipulate the media. Would something like MTASC work to inject new code into existing .swfs? Jason Merrill Bank of America GT&O Learning & Leadership Development eTools & Multimedia Team ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Travis Johnson Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 2:16 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [osflash] Graphic assets in toolchain Right now my organization (as part of a prototype that has moved to production) has 1000's of swf's that we created for an assessment system, all designed using the Flash IDE (which makes compilation horrible, no build system). I was looking into creating something that would be more developer friendly (build-wise) but got stuck at the point of including the assets. I played with swfmill, but I didn't seem to quite be what I was looking for. What I would like to have is an asset library (of sorts) that our developers could pull from (ultimately, end users with a not-yet-developed application). They could select a graphic, rotate, scale, etc... and have it included in the final swf (or even referenced externally, so the same asset could be shared across swfs). I realize this is all possible using jpgs/etc... but these (of course) generally don't do well when scaled. How do other developers handle this? Is this a problem others have encountered and solved too? SWFMILL's SVG support didn't seem to be quite there yet. Regards, Travis
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