A Desperate Plea & Petition For Easily Skinnable Flash Apps

houstonlively posted 5th of February 2011 in Community Voice. 35 comments.

Can someone at Boonex Please, Please, Pretty Please With Sugar on Top, get somebody to work on flash apps that we have some remote chance of skinning?  PLEASE!

This is something that just can't wait another year or two while Dolphin 7.1 fades into existence.  Working with the Flash source files that we have been provided, is a painful experience.  If it weren't, you would have seen a variety of flash skins in the market.  I have no doubt that Rayz, has the one and only development environment set up to work on this stuff, but for the rest of us, it is nothing less than an adventure in frustration.   Sure, there's a set of black flash skins in the market, and I purchased them a long time ago.  I thought I'd try my hand at creating a dark flash chat skin myself, with the intent of just giving it away.  I can get only so far with it.  There are problems with characters within text strings disappearing.  The white background behind the user block in the list of users in a chat room, is impossible to change.  The white outlines around everything in sight, are a nightmare to get rid of, or to change their color.... which makes a dark skin look awful, and amateurish.  These are all problems that exist even with the black flash skins in the market.  Now I know why the developer didn't change them... it's impossible. (Maybe not impossible in the strict sense of the word, but you'll damn sure be pulling your hair out)

We desperately need a way to easily customize the look of flash apps to match the rest of our sites.  White chat rooms, and white media players, look absolutely awful on dark websites.  It's not a professional appearance, and we all hate it.  By today's standards, the Boonex flash apps are in the dark ages as far as customization goes.  Will somebody please take initiative, and do something about this.  I have repeatedly asked for flash apps that can be skinned via xml, for about two years now.

 

I'll even make an architectural suggestion, that might help someone visualize this.

1. Imagine a /templates/base/flashApps directory

2. Further magine sub directories for all the flash apps

3. In each sub directory, visualize a params.xml file, and an image directory

4. Imagine using the params.xml file to specify the color, background color, and border color, etc, of everything in the flash object.

5. The image directory will contain button images, icons, smile sets, etc

6. Finally, imagine the joy of thousands of Dolphin site owners, when they can simply place a copy of all of this, in their tmpl_xxxx/flashApps directory, and use a customized version in place of the default skin when templates are switched.

7. Imagine the joy of all the Dolphin template designers, when they can painlessly change the look of all the flash apps to match their template.  Especially when they will be able to sell the flash skinning as an extension of their main template, for more money.



I Petition That We Need this Now

Sign Below if You Agree

 
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freakpower
dunno if petitont type stuff can somehow affect boonex and especially Andrew :-) but your idea is definitely a good turn so u got my vote ... so this post is my official agreement with petition :-)
mchauhan
you have my vote on this. keep up the good work HL.
YobiLab
Finally! As a flash developer, I can just say : YOU HAVE MY VOTE!
silverado350
You have my vote HL. Something must be done!
It is clear that The flash apps are of very poor design. If this was not true you would see many other developers working with them.
houstonlively
The flash apps themselves are OK. It's the way they are skinned that is really horrible.
hd4real
I'm in HL. It has to be done.
rhimpr
I 100% Agree

Signed; Rhimpr
Anything that helps to customise Dolphin can only broaden the appeal and enhance the Dolphin experience exponentially. This will make Dolphin so much more powerful and give the whole community a boost and make it feel fresh and new. Please accept this as my vote. Long live Dolphin - You rock!
Nathan Paton
The current method is not only time consuming, but expensive. I agree, etc.
francisca_carv
One more agreeing...a better Dolphin serves us all
Stuart038
I'm with you HL. You've got my vote.
sammie
Maybe they need to stop using Flash pro 8 as the editor, and move to something thats this side of the millennium divide?
Just a hint, as code is no longer chipped out on tablets of stone anymore, it might help the younger generation ;)
sammie
Hello, like i posted on the forum, i am sure its an error and they'll ban me again as soon as they notice
Andrew Boon
Any particular reason why we should do that?
HernanL
Vote for HL and another for Sammie not to be banned again, anymore, nunca! Welcomeback, Sammie!
LeatherSportB
I agree. If Boonex is not willing to do this then they should at least add support for JW or Flow player so we can go that route for skins (that pretty much work like as described above) and so much more with plugins.
Andrew Boon
http://www.boonex.com/unity/blog/entry/Thoughts_on_Flash

Ta-dah!
houstonlively
Yeah.... Well Yipeee Kay Yah to you

See my reply, and go do something about it.
magic123
I also agree 100%

Claudia
videoduma
100% agree.
Flash apps are nightmare for me as well, however I choosed Dolphin because that "has" videochat flash apps.

THIS flash chat is out of date!

Wake up Boonex. Please!
 
 
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