Have you ever designed a flash button or image animation that you need to redo and then you find out that you misplaced the original files?

Well usually this means that you end up eating your own time and starting over from the beginning. In some cases its not the end of the world but it can be seriously annoying.

Well this is where you would want to make use of a decompiler program or in this case an online service.Flash probe is meant to provide web developers and design enthusiasts a means of quickly creating HTML pages out of Flash-based websites. The free tool will decompile your SWF and show you the images, text and links that are contained in it. Apart from usage statistics, Flash Probe does not collect, resell or permanently host third party content on its server. After submission of a file, the text and images are available for around 30 minutes after which time all content is deleted.

For the most part you can’t expect to get everything that was part of the project but you should be able to grab enough parts to get started again.

Simply upload or enter the url of the flash object that you want to decompile and let the service do the work.

In a short time you will be presented with what they could retrieve from the file.

Again you are not going to endup with the total source that you can just modify and recompile but it is a starting point.

Visit their website

http://www.flashprobe.com

You embed the video on your page then go to access your menu and the menu is hiding behind your video. This is bad enough if it is a personal site but if you have visitors reading your pages it can be very frustrating for them.

To cure the problem all you need to do is add a wmode statement to the embed code of the video that tells the video to be nice and stick to the page.

In this example you can see we added a Param tag and included the wmode in the embed statement. This should solve the problem for most current browsers.

<object width=”512″ height=”296″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.site.com/1234aerwe”> </param>
<param name=”wmode” value=”opaque”>
<embed src=”http://www.site.com/embed/1234aerwe” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”512″ height=”296″ wmode=”opaque” ></embed> </object>

If you add a lot of videos to your site with a plugin or gallery script that lets you use QuickTags to embed videos just by placing the url on the page you will need to go in and edit the Video Embed script in that code.

The fact is adding wmode opaque to a video’s embed statement really doesn’t do any harm but it will make it behave better.

Their Text-to-Speech Demo Site allows you to convert your text into a .wav audio file that you can include as a voice over in your videos or audio files.

Simply add the text that you want spoken into their form and then select the personality that you want.

There are about 10 voices and they have a variety of accents.

Press speak to hear your words spoken or download when you are happy with the sound file.

If you need a long string or a page full of text converted you will need to do it in sections.

The personalities try their best to understand punctuation but it may take a little adjusting of the text on your part to get the right final product.

This site is for non-commercial use as a demo of the technology.

Their software is used in many popular applications and can be purchased.

Visit

http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

If you are use to using Illustrator you will notice that some of the tools are different which will require another learning curve to forget your normal habits and adapt to new ways of doing things.

But this package does provide enough ways to draw controlled images with a variety of tools that it is definitely worth it.

The major drawback is export options at this time. If you are use to jumping between Illustrator and Photoshop or a desktop publishing package you will need to be able to use one of the 10 or so formats available to export your work.

Since PostScript is one of the options your images should still be able to be used however we have not pumped any files through a prepress processor to check how they will print.

The most important tools are all there.

You can draw freehand and bezier curved lines.

There are a few presets like drawing 3d box shapes or spirals … the developers must like spirals heh.

Rotation of objects can be done through a dialog box or by double clicking with the arrow select tool.

Blends and fills are available including directional fills.

There are a variety of ways to create clipping paths.

All in all this is a pretty nice tool that we are just getting use to playing with.

If it continues to perform as our first trials have shown then it will be a likely replacement for illustrator.

Inkscape is a project with a few years work behind it so you can depend that it will continue as long as a project of this type is needed.

We hope to do a few howtos with this software in the future and you should go download your own copy.

Linkscape is available for Windows, Mac and linux variants.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape/

The product is standard video hosting but on top of that they offer a number of plugins for a variety of different CMS / Blog packages. With their tools you can place videos on your site which isn’t an amazing feature but you can also interact with your visitors by allowing them to post video responses.

Hosting is provided by Kaltura so there is no need for you to worry about going over your web servers quota.

From Their site “Easily install and enjoy Kaltura’s FREE full featured video packages for WordPress, MediaWiki, Drupal, PHP, Ruby on Rails and ANY site! Typically suitable for small to mid-sized websites, our self-serve packages are community supported. Hosting and bandwidth costs up to 10GB are on us.”

So you get up to 10GB maybe before they start contacting you about buying space for your videos. Depending on the format and length of your videos this could be a decent amount or maybe just a days supply.

For more information free blog tools and a free account visit

http://corp.kaltura.com/

ColorMixers provides an easy way to generate a relative pallet of colors based on a single base color.

The process is pretty simple either enter the RGB values or use the slider to set the base color and then 9 relative colors will be generated. The process is not always perfect or useful but it does give you a quick idea of how other colors relate to a base color.

When you complete your color selection you can save the url to the pallet you generated or you can export the values to Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. You can also select export to text and a page of values will be provided for all of the color swatches you generated.

Colors will be saved showing RGB, HTML Hex Values and CMYK. CMYK is a printer value and probably not useful unless you are using the colors for desktop publishing and professional printing.

The colormixers website is difficult to navigate and since the main feature is the color tool they need to provide a direct link to it in their menu. Not doing so is really pretty lame so don’t get lost on the site.

Visit ColorMixers website
http://colormixers.com/mixers/cmr/

Driving Dimensions is a plugin for Google SketchUp 6 and 7 (a free, easy-to-learn 3D-modeling program) running on Windows 2000/XP/Vista that allows the addition of driving dimensions to SketchUp models.

Using the tool you can modify the dimensions of an object to fit the measurements of real world objects. When you enter the size dimensions the object will take on that dimension without your need to modify it manually.

After a simple installation process (just run ldd_setup.exe and follow the instructions), run SketchUp and find a new toolbar with Driving Dimensions. The first time user can control the dimensions of shapes with no knowledge of variational design concept. Productivity can be enhanced by using different tools available with Driving Dimension plug-in.

Here is a demo video

Download the plugin from their website

http://drivingdimensions.com/

PHP Thumbnailer Class v2.0

A PHP image manipulation class, aimed at generating thumbnails. It features the ability to resize by width, height, and percentage, create custom crops, or square crops from the center, rotate the image, and create Apple^TM-style reflections. It also features the ability to perform multiple manipulations per instance (also known as chaining), without the need to save and re-initialize the class with every manipulation.

This class comes in both PHP 4 and 5 flavors

• You can now create custom crops, as well as square crops from the center of the image
• You can also rotate the image clock-wise or counter clock-wise in 90° increments
• You can now create those fancy Apple™-style reflections that are all the rage with the cool “web 2.0″ kids!

For the uninitiated, the class still contains it’s old features:

• Works with gif,jpg, and png images
• Ability to resize by percentage, width, or height
• Ability to set quality of jpg images (0-100%)
• Ability to perform multiple manipulations and saves without re-initializing class, or reloading original image
• Ability to display manipulated image on the fly, enabling dynamic image generation in your scripts

http://www.gen-x-design.com/projects/php-thumbnailer-class/

Well Imsi just released DoubleCad a 2D drafting product that is suppose to exceed the features found in AutoCad LT.

There are 2 versions of DoubelCad… the free version and the pro but for light use most users can get away with the free version.

So, what are you missing if you get the free version?

Double Parallel Lines
Double Perpendicular Lines
Multi Lines
Multi Lines Parallel
Regions
Revision Cloud
Chain Pollyline

Other then those basic tools you also lose some helper features used mostly by architects to draw roofs, walls, doors and other things.

You also lose some dimensional drawing constraint tools.

All in all if you are generating some simple plans for a Deck, Shed or a layout of your furniture or office then you will have everything you need. If you are working as an Architect’s Drafter then you can also get by if you delegate most of the basic drawing tasks to this package and final prep that can be completed either in the pro version or another drafting application.

Dwg DXF and a few other standard file formats are available for import and export in the free version however standard output of PDF often used for printing at service bureaus for larger format output is only available in the Pro Version.

For that reason you will probably need another tool if you are printing large output documents.

For more information and a free download which requires registration visit.

http://doublecad.com

Blenducation brings together a variety of different educators that develop and use their skill in the real world to teach you not just the function of command sets but the best methods of using your toolbox to complete complex tasks in the shortest amount of time.

Blenducation provides classes online through the service DimDim an online meeting website that presents the trainers desktop and allows the students to watch and join the discussion.

Most of the classes are relatively cheap starting at $20 and some are even free.

For more information visit.

http://blenducation.org