I often heard disappointment and despair in regards to creating a website entirely based in Adobe Flash CS3.  One of the strongest opposition points to such a website were based on the inability to bookmark specific "locations" within such a Flash site. So i set out to figure out how to wipe away that stigma.

When it was all said and done, it was quite easy... it just took some intense pre-planning. The premise is simple:

• Import a sitemap
• Import any content relative to the pages
• Use Flash to DOM calls to control URL management
• Redirect incoming URLs to correct Flash content

As for the code and the specifics, I can't yet convince myself to pass it out to the masses. If you are nice and would like to ask for it, though, I may be willing to trade :)

For an example of Flash Bookmarking in action, visit the new Red Red Design studio website portfolio.

One of my current projects is redesigning Parkstreet Brethren's website.  This will be an interesting project, because I am also becoming more involved in this church's ministry.  In an effort to make everyone's life easier, I will be attempting to integrate some handy technology into their site.

Cell phones are even used by church-goers during the service, so I am working on an idea to allow texting of prayer requests during the service.  Maybe this will make all their playing worth while, and it will also serve as a new way to continually keep people connected.  The prayer requests will be accessible as an XML news feed, which will be useful not only during the service, but also on the site and on any potential prayer screens we may have located around the church campus.

In addition to receiving text messages, I also hope to make information and announcements on the website more accessible through RSS news feeds of all updates and enhanced mass mailers/texters.

Also, I thought I would throw in "Fuel" in the title.  One of my coworkers and I are thinking about ways to take the 710 house off the electric grid and make it run on alternative energy.  For starters, we will be playing with pedal bikes that will run or monitors.  We hope to make them from old bikes and other junk that people have.  After that we hope to implement methods by which to actually power the whole house, including Veggie oil.  Yes, we both have been watching Invention Nation on the Science channel.

I was finishing a site today for a client, and questions arose regarding the impending year change.  I was asked how to update the copyright to have the current year.  It really wasn't too hard once I dug into it a little... I'm not sure why it isn't just included in the WEC typo3 install that I was using.  I also threw in some fun newsfeed stuff:

## This shows how to automatically update the copyright year
lib.copyright = TEXT
lib.copyright.data = date:U
lib.copyright.strftime = %Y
lib.copyright.wrap = © | {$constant.siteName}

####################################

### Put the Latest News in the left column on certain pages
[PIDinRootline = 100,102]
lib.latestNews < plugin.tt_news
lib.latestNews {        

code >        
code = LATEST        
pid_list >        
pid_list = 31 # the folder where news are stored        
catImageMode = 0        
catTextMode = 0 

}
lib.leftSide < lib.latestNews
[else] # Put something else in the lib.leftSide
temp.leftSide = TEXT
temp.leftSide.value = Hello
lib.leftSide < temp.leftSide

First and foremost, I am not having issues with TYPO3 as my content management system.  I don't want to hurt it's feelings, because it works pretty well for me.  Lately, though, I have heard more and more talk of Joomla, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I went ahead I installed it on my server.  It was only about 10MB unzipped to upload, which makes uploading easy and fast.  After that, I navigated to the site in my browser.  After inputing a little info about my MYSQL database, I had a site.

I will say that it seems quite different in concept from TYPO3.  First off, I am used to a easily editable sitemap.  It was not quite as intuitive in Joomla, but once I found the location to create new pages, they were easily generated.  Unfortunately, it looks as if the pages must be specified as a certain type of content upon creation, such as blog or news.

I will continue to look at Joomla, especially as they are coming out with a new version soon.  Check back soon to see my continuing experiments with Joomla.

Today I decided to break away from the standard form extension that comes with TYPO3.  It just wasn't cutting it, and the spam bots were going ape on it.  The new one is called "sp_bettercontact", and it looks like it may do just what i need it to.  It says it has some trickery that it uses to fool spam... we'll see.  I am still working on getting the Captcha set up, so you soon may need to be typing in those little scrambled letters so I know that you are not a computer in some guy's mother's basement where he lives in squalor.

Another nice feature of this mailer is that it has extensive error checking and will Auto-mail the sender.  This may be a nice way of annoying people.  Downside to this extension was that the Engrish not so great on the translation flies.  I may have to send in some corrections to this for them.

Finally, after much whining, I got some pretty URLs on my site.  As you can see, if you go to other pages, the URLs actually can make some sense.  Instead of "/index.php?id=32&type=0", it may now say "/about". I think search engines are supposed to like it too!  It wasn't too bad to do either. 

TYPO3, the CMS that I use, includes a .htaccess file in it's root.  It it make to use mod_rewrite and an extension called RealURL, which takes the pretty URLs people type and turn them into relevant links for the server. Until now, though, I've never realized I actually had to go edit the darn thing to make it relevant to my installation.  All that meant was editing some paths in it.  The only problems I had were a result of having my install in some sub-folders on my GoDaddy server. I had to go in and change the line that reads " RewriteRule .* index.php [L] " to " RewriteRule .* /index.php [L] ".  I also had to comment out the " RewriteBase / " line.

So if anyone wonders how to make lovely little URLs, its not too hard to do once you figure out how it works.

Ok, so I admit that some may find this entirely geeky, but my latest personal knowledge pursuit is endeavoring to merge typo3 and Flash.  Before I get too excited, let me fill you in on what that exactly means.

Typo3 is a content management system, and a rockin one at that.  A fellow in Europe, let's call King Kasper, sat down and wrote this unbelievable CMS.  Now I cannot claim that the coding he did was revolutionary, but the organization and structure of the system is really off the charts.  On, and Flash is what make those little games and banners on the internet.

SO a while ago, in the midst of my independent studies in university, I got bored and started mixing the two.  The real benefit to doing this is that flash looks sweet for interactive and motion websites, but it is not really very cool when it comes to updating content, especially if you are the customer.  Now I am in the midst of using Kasper's typo3 backend to organize content and generate XML feeds for site content.

THIS MEANS that I will soon be able to crank out sites that have very dynamic structure while still maintaining the super sweetness of flash interactivity.  TO see the start of the efforts, head on over to Red Red Design to see it in it's ever increasing Typo3+Flash greatness.

TTFN my BFF
Sir Knowlton