Web Archive - SWX: SWF Data Format

Dec 14, 2007 0

The Code Zone by John Hattan

The Code Zone by John Hattan is a miniature game-portal of sorts.

Here's what John says about his entry:

The site centers around my Daily Puzzles, which are a set of (currently twelve) puzzle games. The puzzles change once a day, and users can log in to play if they want to rank themselves against other players. After solving a puzzle, you're invited to return the next day to see how well you fared against the rest of the players. You also have the option of emailed high score tables, RSS feeds of scores, and daily posts of your rankings to Twitter.

I use SWX to handle user management, login/logout, submitting scores, trophies (hidden awards for in-game accomplishments) and the "statisticalyzer" app that users can use to view their scores and awards.

Thus-far I've found SWX to be easier, lighter, and more reliable than remoting -- my communications failures have dropped to almost zero. Future plans include SWX-based daily rankings widgets for the various widget-platforms as well as Chumby.

Visit the site.

Dec 10, 2007 1

Photo Gallery Viewer by Julio Rodriguez

Photo Gallery Viewer by Julio Rodriguez is an online tool for viewing web Photo Galleries from Flickr or Picasa (Web Albums).

The photos are presented in a unified and easy to use interface. Its built using the Flickr API that comes with SWX, and SWXml to incorporate data from the Picasa API.

View the site.

Dec 10, 2007 0

Extraordinary Careers by Adam Royle

Extraordinary Careers is the web site of Laing O'Rourke, a privately-owned development, construction and specialist company based in Australia.

The web site makes use of CakeSWXPHP and uses SWX in a novel manner, as explained by the site's developer, Adam Royle:

I needed to get some data into a flash site (http://www.extraordinarycareers.com.au/), so I used a combination of swx and cakephp (using CakeSWXPHP of course).

The site doesn't access the gateway directly. The SWF is generated when the site is published from the admin section, and uploaded to the site with the rest of the site files.

What I initially thought would be a big task - getting all of the data into flash in a way that was fast and easy to work with - was a breeze, all thanks to SWX! All of the site data (content, image paths, video paths, etc) is loaded upon startup and is less than 25kb - much less than the JSON equivalent I also tried!

So SWX isn't just great for truly "dynamic" situations - it's even useful for generating static data.

Dec 10, 2007 0

Gal to Gal Walk by R. Jon MacDonald

The Gal To Gal Foundation has a new web site and online campaign for the Gal To Gal Virtual Walk 2007. It aims to improve the lives of women diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer and is expected to raise $1m. The site is due to be featured on the Martha Stewart Show on Monday, October 1st to a national audience in the United States.

The site it uses SWX RPC, with a SWX PHP back-end.

Jon MacDonald has a case study of the Gal To Gal Virtual Walk project, wherein he explains that the entire site was built in one-and-a-half weeks:

SWX is used extensively throughout the site to communicate with the back-end and database. This enabled the rapid development timeline, and made the process of storing and passing data through PHP seamless. I haven't seen any other true sites built with SWX, but rather small mash-ups and widgets, so I believe this is a first for the SWX project.

Read more about GalToGalWalk.org in my blog post and on Jon's case study.

View the site here.

Dec 10, 2007 1

Pink Spirits by R. Jon MacDonald

High-profile consumer site pulling all content from custom-built PHP CMS using SWX. Beyond basic text and images, SWX is also used for a custom written retail locator. Site is hosted on shared server (specifically MediaTemple's GridServers) and is a great example of extensive use of SWX on shared hosting. While site is not currently 'live' for public consumption, it will be within the next few days at http://www.pinkspirits.com.

Dec 10, 2007 1

Toni’s Bauernsuche by Muevo and Moodley

The idea for Toni’s Bauernsuche (Toni’s Farmer-Search) resulted from a project Muevo did together with one of our partners, Moodley.

The clients’ company, Toni’s Freilandeier, sells free range eggs that come from farmers in the local area. With the re-launch of his website the client required a feature showing his customers the origin of each egg (every egg sold in Austria has a special control number printed on its shell, connecting it to a specific farmer, and indicating how the animals are kept).

The Flash microsite allows users to browse information about the farmers who supply Toni’s (and are therefore committed to strict quality standards). It shows photographs, detailed information such as the number of hens, contact addresses, and phone numbers. Users can also directly search for specific farmers using the farmer’s name, ZIP code, or egg control number as search criteria.

Technical Facts

The project consists of two major parts: a Flash frontend for visualization and a PHP backend for content management. The data is held in a MS SQL database provided and maintained by the client’s company.

The PHP backend handles database connectivity and functionality for data retrieval, including search and random search queries. All content is loaded dynamically at runtime, including the loading of images, which is served by a binary action. The backend is based on the CakePHP framework, which
allows a rapid development of the necessary database handling, and a simple administration area to directly maintain content and images online.
Using Wouter Verweirder‘s great CakeSWXPHP implementation, it was fairly straightforward to add SWX functionality to the backend.

The frontend is implemented in Flash and ActionScript 2.0. By encapsulating the business logic in several distinct classes by making use of best-practice software design patterns like facades and singleton objects, it was easy for both (non-programming) designers and more advanced software engineers to work together on this project. SWX integrated very well through its object oriented approach.

How It Uses SWX

At the beginning of the project we had a close look at different techniques for implementing Flash to the backend communication. With most techniques the necessary “overhead” for sending and retrieving data to and from the backend was far too high. After discovering SWXFormat.org it was soon clear that this would be the way to go. SWX not only has a low overhead when it comes to necessary function calls for data preparation and retrieval, but through its binary file format the processing of the retrieved data is also a snap.

View the site.

For full details, please refer to these PDFs: Contest Submission, Back-end details.

Dec 10, 2007 2

Animated Flickr Mosaic by Trevor Boyle

Animated Flickr Mosaic by Trevor Boyle uses SWX to load the latest images uploaded to Flickr into my flash movie and then creates an animated mosaic of the loaded image. Because images are constantly being uploaded onto Flickr, and the random animation, your visual experience will be different to everyone elses. There is also the option to view images from a specific user, which means that you can view your own images with the same effect.

View the site.

Dec 10, 2007 1

Moodboard Generator by Charles Brandt

Moodboard Generator by Charles Brandt asks you to give it up to 6 search terms at a time which describe the things you want to see on your moodboard.

Using SWX the 100 most recent photos for each of the terms are retrieved.

The photos are then animated gliding onto stage to a random location. Over time this creates a collage. Images may be repositioned by clicking and dragging them. Images can be saved to your favorites list by double clicking them.

Once you have added items to your favorites list you can create a moodboard of just those pictures and then upload it to Flickr using SWX.

This toy is especially interesting when you enter abstract concepts like dangerous or happy. It is also very interesting to enter a country's name and see what pictures people believe represent that country.

View the site

Dec 10, 2007 0

Flickr slideshow widget by Charles Brandt

The Flickr slideshow widget by Charles Brandt takes the 20 most recent pictures from my Flickr account using SWX and makes a crossfading slideshow of them. The slideshow also displays the titles of the images as captions.

View the slideshow widget on Charles' web site (in the top right under the section titled My Recent Flickr Photos).

Dec 10, 2007 0

Supermenus by Hans Elgelid

Supermenus by Hans Elgelid uses SWX PHP together with the Flickr API and ASWing.The application interoperates with the Joomla CMS and gives you the ability to use images/Flash as a menu instead of text.

Here's what Hans says about his entry:

You can now using your Flickr library or your own server's library of images, create an imagelink as a subsitute or complement to the menu link you previously have created from your backend in Joomla ( http://jaya.to/swx/administrator guest guest ).

The application is included in Joomla by using Joomla's Wrapper module which allows you to include an iframe into your application/website.
It distributed as part of a Joomla template wich makes it easily distributed and installed by, I think millions of people. Google "free joomla templates" and see.

cash advance
Test out the application at: http://jaya.to/swx

Tripple-click on the background of the image menu and log in with username guest, password guest.

SWX: SWF Data Format

The Code Zone by John Hattan

Photo Gallery Viewer by Julio Rodriguez

Extraordinary Careers by Adam Royle

Gal to Gal Walk by R. Jon MacDonald

Pink Spirits by R. Jon MacDonald

Toni’s Bauernsuche by Muevo and Moodley

Animated Flickr Mosaic by Trevor Boyle

Moodboard Generator by Charles Brandt

Flickr slideshow widget by Charles Brandt

Supermenus by Hans Elgelid

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