Welcome to another Sponsored Pixel2life Studios review! Today we are going to look at an amazing new Flash Component by Flashloaded.com called photoFlow. I've seen a ton of generic Flash photo galleries and chances are you have as well, but nothing like this at all, in terms of simple good lucks, robust functionality and customizable options. You can use this component as a scrollable gallery or even as a slideshow presentation. Check out some of the features you've got with this:

1. Easily update images using the Component Inspector, ActionScript or an XML file
2. Adjustable flip speed, spacing between stacked images and image size
3. Customizable perspective view and reflections
4. Option to flip images as a slideshow
5. Add links/hyperlinks to each image
6. ActionScript events to perform an action when an image has loaded, is selected, etc…
7. Images can be external or included in the library
8. Mouse wheel image flipping (Windows only)
9. Optionally display a name for each image
10. Option to set the number of images to preload
11. Option to automatically scale images to fit or to fill the defined size
12. Zoom in on selected image or on all images on mouse over
13. photoFlow can open on a pre-defined image
14. Customizable background color and opacity
15. Option to start flipping from left-to-right or right-to-left
16. Supports sound effects for image flipping
17. Built-in preloader
18. Light weight (weighs only 18kb with the scrollbar)

You can read the complete feature list and descriptions HERE!

I spent about 30 minutes playing around with this in gallery mode, it's really quite appealing and easy to use. Many gallery type scripts tend to be clunky but photoFlow is actually FUN to use. You can flip around through the photos and zoom in, use the scroll wheel and play around. Be sure to check out the photoFlow product page for live demos that look like this:

This really is a complete turn-key gallery, and at 18kb including the scrollbar, you're not even putting a dent in the page load of your site. It even has a pre-loader built right in, so you don't even have to mess with that. In terms of requirements, you can edit this in Macromedia Flash 8 or Adobe Flash CS3 and it runs under Flash Player 8 or 9 utilizing ActionScript 2.0. Here's a look at the Component Inspector for photoFlow:

How's THAT for customizing options?

If you are looking for a complete and easy to use image gallery for your Flash projects, I HIGHLY recommend you check out Flashloaded's photoFlow. I should also mention that's not all these guys make either… scroll to the bottom of the product page and you'll find a HUGE list of other awesome Flash products they make at very affordable prices considering the HOURS of development time you'll save with these.

Enjoy!
Dan

Hey guys! There’s been quite a bit of activity lately and I’ve been sort of dabbling in all kinds of spots… So here’s a quick round-up of what’s new, what I’ve been up to and all that jazz. First off, I want to show you a little splash page I made for a friend of mine. As some of you may know, I’m pretty heavy in to the Garage Kit community and one of my good friends and favorite artists in the community is Joe Dunaway, who is especially famous for his insanely awesome Predator model kit build-ups. Anyhow, I host a gallery page for him and he asked me to hook him up with a new front Splash page for him. Here’s what I came up with:

You can check out the full thing at www.modelzone.com

I really liked the way this came out, and I really liked the way the ripple effect on the reflection turned out, making the logo look like it’s sitting in water. Call me bias, but I thought this turned out really cool. So then I was puttering around thinking of a new tutorial to write when I thought maybe folks would like to know how I made that cracked text effect and the rippled reflection. You can apply that cracked effect to anything actually.. text, objects, photos etc. So, I decided to divide this up in to a 2-part tutorial, starting with how to create cracked text and objects in Corel Photopaint.

This tutorial is once again published on the Pixel2life Publishing System, and I invite you to come check out my latest lesson HERE! This tutorial covers how to apply cracks and other textures to a variety of surfaces in a technique that is as easy as pie!

In a couple of weeks I’ll also be posting the second part that shows how I made the ripple reflection part, so stay tuned for that.

It’s also been pretty busy for me because Halloween is fast approaching and one of my new services on Predatorstuff.com is my costume sales. I’ve teamed up with Kre8-FX and the talented Pete Mander to create the ultimate Predator costume and this is our first Halloween round and it’s been MADNESS! We’re actually shipping out the first suits next week and I am REALLY stoked at showing off the final pics. Here’s a photo of the upper torso of an AvP Predator costume we released a couple of weeks ago:

If you want to see more about these suits we’re doing, check out the post on www.predatorstuff.com.

And you thought I only did tutorials? HAR!

And on an entertainment note, is anyone else out there completely obsessed with how kick-ass Rescue Me is? I’ve been a Dennis Leary fan for years and his Fireman TV series is absolutely his best work and one of the best television series I have EVER seen.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Rescue me is an edgy adult TV series about the lives of various FNDY firefighters post 9/11 and how badly their lives have turned since that tragic day. It’s EXTREMELY gritty and isn’t carried on regular stations, it’s only on speciality stations like Fox’s action showcase channel. There’s loads of swearing, sexual content and has quite often had me in tears from laughing so hard. The 4th season JUST wrapped up and you can find the first 3 series on DVD all over the place. I HIGHLY recommend you check out this show, it’s every bit as good as reviewers say it is. I personally think television SUCKS and 99% of TV shows are absolute garbage, especially reality shows and all that nonsense. There’s only a couple of series I enjoy, like Third Watch (sucks it’s over), Prison Break (although that’s starting to get tedious now), but Rescue Me is probably the best thing since MacGyver!

You can also check out their official website at www.fxnetwork.com for showtimes and details about the production and cast.

The other day some P2L community members were talking about various ideas to boost the forum participation up and one of them jokingly poked a jab saying maybe we should start talking about version 5 of P2L, even though we just released v4. Well, I didn’t say anything he’d be surprised how close he came to the mark, because I am indeed already mulling over ideas and concepts for the 5th version of the site. There’s nothing SOLID down yet, but one of the things we are looking at is the possibility of a complete redesign and leaving behind the look we’ve more or less carried around since v2. This would be one of the biggest things we’ve done on the site actually as a new layout can be a make-it-or-break-it move. I’ve already been working with Nick and 2 other professional design groups, which will remain unnamed for the time being, on some concept designs, but I haven’t decided on anything yet. I just figured that being the guy that has designed everything on the site for the last 4 years, maybe it’s time we had a fresh set of eyes look at a design and freshen things up completely.

So nothing concrete on this yet, but I thought I’d mention it here for the few of you that read my blog, let alone read enough of this post to make it to this point.

So that’s about it for me… very busy on all kinds of projects and trying to have some fun in between. Take care gang and we’ll see you next post!

Dan

School season is nearly upon us, and for me that means I ease out of full-time dad mode and start getting back in to posting articles, working on my sites and in general, be around a lot more to annoy everyone that got used to me being so vaporish for the last 2 months. I just finished off this week’s P2L newsletter and sent that off (you can sign up for the newsletter on Pixel2life.com by using the sign up box on the right side of the site) and I have some goodies I wanted to share with my blog readers in case you didn’t catch the newsletter.

P2L Update:

First off, we’ve added a quick Digg icon to all tutorial records indexed at P2L for quick access to social bookmarking goodness on everyone’s favorite news portal. Ok, maybe not everyone’s but certainly me!

Simply click on the Digg dude to add your digg to a tutorial, or if it hasn’t dugg yet, to add it to the Digg index. Just bear in mind you do need to have a Digg account for this to work (duh!). You’ll also notice some text right next to it saying “Share It!”. This is going to be a nifty popup style sharing box that will quickly allow you to bookmark tutorials on social networks on the fly with all your favorite sites. Adam will be working on this tomorrow so we might see this up and running by Sunday night if all goes well, just keep an eye on the news for the announcement. The new share box will allow you to post to Del.icio.us, Reddit, Technorati and more!

Go Media Arsenal Update:

Go Media’s Arsenal line of products has just been updated with 2 new packs for you designers out there!

Go Media’s Arsenal Vector Pack 7 is out features 7 vector packs with 296 pieces of pure vector goodness. The set includes the following packs: Ornate, War, Stains, Hair, Scrolls, Stars & Hearts, and Horror. Check it all out HERE!

They also have a BADASS new water color texture pack added to their gorgeous texture series… you can check that out HERE!

I’ve done some work with these texture packs in Corel Photopaint and the results are absolutely astounding. The packs are very edgy with stylish graphics, not worthless images that are about as cool as a butterfly collar. Just look through them and see for youself.

Free Stuff from EEZY Sites!

What do www.vecteezy.com, www.brusheezy.com and www.fresheezy.com have in common? They all have the same owner, the same last 4 letters, and some KICK ASS free goods for graphic designers!

They’ve got vectors, shapes, icons, bruches, WordPress and other CMS system themes and TONS more! I was actually shown these sites by a one of our advertisers today and I was blown away at the quality of this content that is 100% free. Go check them out for yourself and be sure to drop the webmaster a note and let him know how awesome his offerings are… this guy deserves a medal.

OK gang that’s it from me tonight, time to go post some more goodies on P2L! Giggidy Giggidy!

Dan

Color theorists and designers in fashion or computer graphics have coined phrases based around what colors shouldn’t go together. Here’s a great article I found on Digg that shows us that sometimes it’s fun to break the rules, not to mention make some pretty sweet designs.

read more | digg story

I just received a pretty cool newsletter article this morning about a very touchy subject, especially among coders. While I am certainly not a web programmer and prefer to stick to making the pretty pictures and being the PR guy, I’ve managed to get myself involved in quite a few heated discussions about this. I figured I’d share this article, it’s a great read put together by Sasch Mayer, a very experienced technical writer for IceGiant.

The Myth of W3C Compliance?
By Sasch Mayer

The past few years have seen a huge increase in the number of search engine optimisers preaching about the vital importance of W3C Compliance as part of any effective web promotion effort. But is compliant code really the ‘Magic SEO Potion’ so many promoters make it out to be?

For those of you not familiar with the term; a W3C compliant web site is one which adheres to the coding standards laid down by the World Wide Web Consortium, an organisation comprising of over 400 members including all the major search engines and global corporations such as AT&T, HP and Toshiba amongst many others. Headed by Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of the internet as we know it today, the W3C has been working to provide a set of standards designed to keep the web’s continuing evolution on a single, coherent track since the Consortium’s inception in 1994.

Whilst the W3C has been a fact of life on the web since this time, general industry awareness of the benchmarks set down by the Consortium has taken some time to filter through to all quarters. Indeed, it is only within the past 24 to 36 months that the term W3C Compliance has emerged from general obscurity to become a major buzzword in the web design and SEO industries.

Although personally, I have been a staunch supporter of the Consortium’s standards for a long time, I cannot help but feel that their importance has been somewhat overplayed by a certain faction within the SEO sector, who are praising code compliance as a ‘cure-all’ for poor search engine performance.

Is standards compliance really the universal panacea it is commonly claimed to be these days?

Let’s take a quick look at some of the arguments most commonly used by SEOs and web designers:

1. Browsers such as Firefox, Opera and Lynx will not display your pages properly.

Browser compatibility is possibly one of the most frequently cited reasons for standards compliance, with Firefox being the usual target for these claims. Speaking from personal experience, Firefox will usually display all but the most broken code with reasonable success. In fact, this browser’s main issue seems to lie more with its occasional failure to correctly interpret the exact onscreen position of layers (Div tags - this often causes text overlap) even when expressed correctly, than its inability to deal with broken code.

What about Lynx? Interestingly enough whilst it is somewhat more fragile than Firefox, most of the problems encountered by this text-only browser mostly seem to stem from improper content semantics (paragraphs out of sequence) than poor code structure.

2. Search engines will have problems indexing your site.

Some SEOs actively claim that search engine spiders have trouble indexing non-compliant web pages. Whilst, again speaking from personal experience, there is an element of truth to these claims; it is not the sheer number of errors which causes a search engine spider to have a ‘nervous breakdown’, but the type of error encountered. So long as the W3C Code Validator is able to parse (*) a page’s source code from top to bottom, a search engine will likely be able to index it and classify its content. On the whole, indexing problems arise when code errors specifically prevent a page from being parsed altogether, rather than non-critical errors which allow the process to continue.

* To parse is to process a file in order to extract the desired information. Linguistic parsing may recognise words and phrases or even speech patterns in textual content.

3. Disabled internet users will not be able to use your site.

The inevitable, but somewhat weak, counter-argument to this point is that only an infinitely small percentage of internet users are visually or aurally impaired. However, it is a fact that browsers such as Lynx and JAWS (no, not the shark) will view a web page’s code in much the same way as a search engine spider. From this perspective, we once again return to the difference between critical and non-critical W3C compliance errors. As long as whatever tool/browser/spider is used to extract text content from a page’s code is able to continue its allotted task, the user is likely to be able to view the page in a satisfactory manner.

Interestingly, one of my fellow designer/SEOs over in Japan has just run an experiment entitled “W3C Validation; Who cares?” testing the overall importance of W3C compliance to long-term web promotion efforts. Whilst the results of this, the world’s most non-compliant web page, do initially indicate that compliance does not make much of a difference to a search engine’s ability to index and classify a web page, I do rather suspect that further research may be needed in order to establish the long-term effects of this experiment.

At the time of writing however, the page ranks well with Google for the following two non-specific search terms; “Does Google care about validation” and “Google care validation” - not bad for a page which is supposed to be utterly and completely un-indexable. What then is the answer to the W3C compliance conundrum?

In conclusion I would say that ignoring the World Wide Web Consortium’s standards at this stage may well have negative consequences in the long-term, as the internet’s continuing evolution is likely to place greater emphasis on good coding practices in the future. Having said this, I would also say that the current value of W3C compliance has been overplayed by some professionals in the web design and SEO industries.

Further studies into the effects of non-compliance are certainly needed.

About The Author
Sasch Mayer, a writer with well over a decade’s experience in the technology and internet sectors, is currently living in Larnaca on the Cypriot south coast. He writes under contract to IceGiant, a web studio specialising in W3C compliant web design in Cyprus, the UK and the rest of the world.

Hope you enjoyed the article… please feel free to leave a comment

Dan