For the past eight month we have been working on the major upgrade for PHP Email Merge - data-diven mass mailer extension for Dreamweaver. I would like to thank all those who participated in beta testing for their time and valuable suggestions.
Email Merge has now gone AJAX - no more page refreshes when sending messages!

The new features include:

• Progress monitor (graphic progress bar, number of messages sent and percent done).
• Stop, pause, resume and skip to the next (to continue interrupted cycle) while sending.
• Set automatic delay interval (in minutes) to work around hosting provider limitations.
• Upload images to the server and immediately use them in your message.
• Preview and insert images from your server.
• Use message templates: preview and save them to the server or local hard drive (now also available in Firefox); preview and load templates from the server (in txt, html and php file format).
• Specify Character Encoding.
• Change any message parameter at any time during mailout cycle.

Version 3 it out. It has been re-written using using {mdm}Script™ and re-compilled in MDM ZINC™ v2 - the new generation SWF2EXE application (By the way the only one on the market capable of creating Macintosh compatible projectors).
You can download the MXI utility here as always FREE.

The 7 Web Behaviors extensions suite for Flash has been updated. I have added three more behaviors:

• Cross-browser Add to Favorites behavior
• Two form control behaviors: Submit and Reset HTML form

The first one will display Add to Favorites or Bookmark dialog box (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox) or (for browsers that do not support this feature) a message box with the bookmark shortcut (Ctrl+T for Opera and Ctrl+D for Netscape 4.7).
Using the other two you can submit or reset an HTML form residing in the same document with your Flash file.

You can purchase the suite here

"Fly!" is a new book by American author Mark Tufts, his first book for children. It may come as a surprise for some of his old readers who consider Mark a Master of Adventure/Thriller Genre.

Far, far away, hidden deep amongst jagged granite peaks lies the mystical kingdom of Washado. In this remote land, untouched by man, birds of every feather have flocked together to create a special place of peace and prosperity that has remained unchanged for all of time... until a devious Raven steals the royal heir bearing egg from the nest of a ruling Eagle, and unwittingly changes the Avian kingdom forever.

Check out my Flash promo here
For more information about Mark, exerpts from his books, his poetry and short stories visit his site at http://www.marktufts.com (Also designed by yours truly )

While working on my most resent Flash extension (7 Web Behaviors) I have encountered this unexpected problem:
A JavaScript function call triggered from Flash didn’t work in Opera browser.
Consider the following code (which is the most basic example):

getURL("javascript:alert('Hello World')");

Obviously the code should pop-up a JavaScript message box. It worked perfectly fine in any modern browser on both PC and Mac. It did work in Opera also, but only when testing the Flash movie locally. When I tested the code on the server it didn’t work as expected, and by this I mean ... nothing happened at all.

It took me a little while to realise what was "causing the problem":
The <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> parameter of the <object> tag and ‘allowScriptAccess="sameDomain"’ attribute of the <embed> tag in the HTML file which contains the swf. By default the file is generated by Flash MX 2004 when the movie is published. When a JavaScript function call is triggered by the Flash movie residing on a remote server the Opera Flash plug-in "thinks" the call is made from a different domain, or so it appears. Removing the attribute/ parameter solves the problem immediately. I understand this might be not the best solution, but a better one yet to be found.

For the last couple of days I’ve been working on a data-driven Flash photo gallery. One of the features requested by the client was the ability to update the gallery just by uploading new images to the server.
So no database, no text or XML file to edit, only copy and paste from “My Documents” to the FTP folder using Internet Explorer.

To add to the problem the Flash photo gallery component I have been using loads the list of galleries and images from an external XML file...


And here is the simple solution I came up with:
Why not let a server-side script read the content of the folder and return it to Flash as XML? This way the user(s) could safely add, edit or delete folders ('galleries') or files without having to worry about an external data source.

Here is the code of the PHP file that is being loaded into Flash as XML:

<menuitems><?
//Define root folder
$maindir = "." ;
$mydir = opendir($maindir) ;

//Get list of folders
while($folder = readdir($mydir)) {
// A folder is anything without an extension (May not always be true e.g. htaccess file)
$f_is = strstr($folder, “.”);
if ($f_is !="") {
continue;
}
//Output opening XML node for the folder
echo "<item title=\"".$folder."\"><images directory=\"photos/".$folder."\">";

//Get list of JPEG images
$imagelist = opendir($folder);

while($image = readdir($imagelist))
{
//If filename contains “.jp” it’s a JPEG
$i_is = strstr(strtolower($image), ".jp");
if ($i_is =="") {
continue;
}
//Write opening tag for an image
echo "<imageNode jpegURL=\"".$image."\" thumbURL=\"".$image."\" title=\"\">";
//Write image name to be used as a comment but strip the extensioin
echo substr($image,0,strpos($image,"."));
echo "</imageNode>";
}
//Close XML nodes
echo "</images></item>";
closedir($imagelist);
}
closedir($mydir);
?>
</menuitems>

A similar approach can be used to build an MP3 player or ... if you want Flash to present a structure of physical folder(s) on the sever, optionally applying custom filters on file extensions.