Building a Flash based dynamic photo album

[2ndPlatform]

Good evening all --

Had a question to pose to the masses -- hopefully this is the right spot and maybe someone out there has some opinions. I was comissioned to create an online photo album -- the guy originally mentioned Flash (you know -- roll over the thumbnail and the main image changes, that sort of thing). I'm wondering a couple of things...

First of all, I feel kinda dumb for not knowing this, but does anyone know how, in Flash, to pull in an image but not have it be imbedded within Flash? Similar to the concept of an iFrame or something like that.

Second of all, does anyone happen to have an opinion on whether or not Flash is really the best development area for something like this, or if some sort of DHTML would be better (faster, more efficient, etc.)

The main goal is to create a system that pulls images from some folder where my client can continually dump new images in but he won't have to alter the photo album system... it'll always just pull everything that's in that folder.

I'm sure there's actually something out there too -- not sure if I should bum something else or create from scratch. He's definitely got a custom interface he has in mind.

Dunno -- if anyone has thoughts, I'd appreciate it!

Cheers,
Shannon

[yni420]

Hi

Actually i cant say that flash would be the ideal choice.
you say you want a dynamic one
what does that mean?
Almost all flash based tools embed the images to the file and not maintain it as seperate.
i dont know of anyway to not embed the image

PM me with more details as to what exactly you want
Maybe i can help

yni420

[Soral 3.0]

well, for your second question,
I was once flipping through this book entitled: "DHTML and CSS for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide" 3rd edition I believe -- and the author gave a [biased] comparison of dhtml vs. flash.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201730847/ref=sib_rdr_dp/104-8810718-6141534

he stated that dhtml was more efficient and gets the job done -- however, flash is well, more flashy. Pending on what you want -- each has their own strengths and weaknesses.
goto your local bookstore and flip through it to read about it more.

Some other factors on your side are the cost of flash. Flash MX 2004 professional is running at $700 retail. DHTML is "free".
Both will require diligence as they both have large learning curves.

I use flash and it has a photo album template -- and here is another site that may be of help:
http://whatdoiknow.org/archives/001629.shtml

If your client wants ease of use and customability? I think he is asking for a nice ride to the moon -- right now web photo albums are "either or".
It's hard to get both right now.

I'm not sure if this topic is dead, but give us more details if you need more help.

Soral 3.0

[Antonbomb22]

creating a flash photo album is possible with the intergration of dynamic language such as php. ive seen flash based forums and photoalbums but i hear its very difficult to code and make it work

[mikeSQL]

www.flashkit.com . Great tutorials. Also if using Macromedia's FlashMX, you might wanna check out their site too at www.macromedia.com/flashmx

[stacyL]

Dear Shannon,

I was also comissioned to create an online photo album , so I tried my best to know more about this, and I got one important information from my best friend, we can use one photo album maker software, wait for a moment, I checked the name to you ,oh, it's Photo Story Platinum, not too expensive, but I felt it is easy to operate, just follow the basic steps, you can create a stunning flash photo album, to our surprise, you can publish your photo album on website or burn it on DVD and share it with your friends and family.
I am not familiar with PC operation, but applying this software is not difficult , when I watched the dazzling samples created with this software, I can't believe it , I collect that website : http://www.photo2vcd.com/samples.html and commend to you ,I wish it would be helpful to you!

Cheers,
stacy

[amanda112]

I agree ....Flash is the best choice if you want to make a photo album it have a feature of animation that will be the best thing...

[kevinly]

I agree ....Flash is the best choice if you want to make a photo album it have a feature of animation that will be the best thing...

Sure, to make a photo album animative is the best thing. and now, Christmas is coming, I want to preserve the Xmas memory, Making a Christmas Photo movie should be a good idea. I also know about Photo Story Platinum , but I have strong interest to get some tutorial about it. Today, I am excited because I find one tutorial just for creating Christmas photo movie , so I share it here, Hope it is helpful for you to create your own Xmas photo movie.

[Sanguals]

why not use a flash aobum maker? actually they build the flash album easily and quickly. see this one: a photo album maker

[CoffeeChef]

Flash is great for creating and maintaining a photo album if you are willing to maintain it. You would have to build an application involving [I]actionscript[/I], XML, HTML and PHP, for Flash to present these images that are constantly dumped into a folder. In other words, if your client wants the ability to update the album for the end-user or browser, it requires programming, and/or maintenance. http://www.flashgallery.org

The above posts mention some great alternatives, but these are more like public photo albums with personal links. Although these would be easy to maintain by your client, he/she will lose out on the personal aspect of it being part of their website. A link would the best relationship.

I think Flash is great, and welcome the challenges various projects present. But considering what you and your client are looking for, I think that Flash might be a bit daunting unless you want to learn a bit (a lot?) of actionscript.

I just googled flash photo gallery tutorial and got some pretty good hits too.

[php_noob]

Sure there are cheap treasures in WWW but still the concept is what you need to make it work.
Programming is a matter of substituting the right code to fit your needs.

Flash Kit is still the best resource for all your FLASH

but the concept you are thinking is something way beyond I knew.... HEHEHE!
I am sure there is still that can be substitute to something close to what you want to achieve.

Try also this

Happy Coding!

[CoffeeChef]

Sure there are cheap treasures in WWW but still the concept is what you need to make it work. Programming is a matter of substituting the right code to fit your needs.

Flash Kit is still the best resource for all your FLASH

but the concept you are thinking is something way beyond I knew.... HEHEHE! I am sure there is still that can be substitute to something close to what you want to achieve.

Try also this

Happy Coding!

One of my favs.

[erico564]

Personally, I think that Flash is a great application for handling photo albums. That said, a photo album is definitely an intermediate-level application, because as CoffeeChef said, you will need to be using Flash, XML, and dynamically-loaded images and variables if you want to give the client the ability to update the photo album.

The photo album component that I've used most often is SlideShowPro . SlideShow Pro is hugely customizeable, easy to use, and well-documented. I've never had troubles with SlideShowPro galleries getting buggy or breaking or anything like that. It also supports video. They also sell SlideShowPro Director which is a very slick CMS that allows easy updates of the images, complete with automatic thumbnail generation. And the price tag is cheap ($29 each for SlideShowPro and Director). The only negative at all that I can think of for SlideShowPro is that it does not work in ActionScript 3 sites :( They say they're working on that but for now is AS2-only.

If you're dead set on building your own photo album from scratch, take a look at this photo album tutorial from Kirupa.com. It's a little old, but it is thorough and should give you a good handle on loading images dynamically via an XML file.

Good luck!

--eric

[erico564]

Quick update -- SlideShowPro has been updated to support AS3 as well as a bunch of other sweet features (such as a free PHP file which will automatically read all the contents in a particular folder and output the appropriate XML). Those guys just keep making a good product better ;)

Also, I don't know if you've checked out FlashDen , but they've got a TON of Flash slideshows and they mostly cost in the range of $5-$10. Usually you get the source files and everything, so if you want to learn how to build galleries yourself it can be cost effective to buy one and then look at the code they did.

Rock on!

--eric

[tdjprj]

For your first question, yes in Flash, you pull in images but not have it be imbedded within Flash. Many flash gallery loads image from an external file (JPG, GIF, etc), and the images path are defined in a XML file.

There are lots of flash gallery templates you could find which comes with XML file support. IF you prefer not to touch XML coding, you might also consider a flash gallery software , which can import images and generate the XML and HTML code for you automatically.

[rajarajan07]

Check the link for an idea : http://www.beapartofart.com/

Click the mosaic image on the left and check with the tool that was developed by me. All the thumbnail images are stored by the client in a folder and fetched by flash with the good presentation style in grid format.

My suggestion is Flash and PHP

[newviewit.com]

Jquery has some great tools for building photo galleries.

Also check out smashingmagazine as they had some great tutorials a few weeks back

[almostbob]

autoloading stuff in php or other server language is easy
one file in the folder
and auto thumbnails and display and slideshow with fade

http://panmental.de/public/programming_projects/Slideshow%20script%20in%20PHP/

[Moirae]

Hello
I've made few photo galleries using Flash and they're all great and pretty easy to modify, especially if you use XML files to attach pictures (you can attach videos also).
I used video tutorials from www.cartoonsmart.com (you need to pay for those, but I think you can find them for free somewhere on the Net).
Cheers!