Software review: ActiveSWF 1.1

ActiveSWF is a dynamic SWF technology developed by CPS labs in Russia to create Flash SWF files from XML data. It will be of particular interest to Flash content creators.

What does it do? Create SWF files from XML
Platforms: Windows
Manufacturer: CPS labs
Website: http://activeswf.com
Price: ActiveSWF Professional ($249)
Price: ActiveSWF Lite ($49)
Price: ActiveSWF Free (Free)

How does it work?
ActiveSWF is a Windows COM object that transforms XML data into SWF movies. The Flash content is described with ActiveSWF XML and then the ActiveSWF component code transforms this into corresponding SWF content. The exported files are supported by Flash Player 5 and up.

The ActiveSWF XML schema is a pretty simple four step process. Firstly you define content objects, then their associated styles. Finally you describe their show order and transformations. If the COM object encounters any error (such as missing files or invalid XML) then this is captured by the developers programming environment, You can see some examples of it in action at http://activeswf.com/samples/xml/charts.html

The project, begun last year, is primarily aimed at content creators who have a need to produce dynamic Flash files but don't have the time or inclination to get into the minutia of the SWF specification. This latest version (v1.1 released in August) contains a bunch of new features and much improved documentation.
Versions
ActiveSWF comes in three distributions ranging from professional to free. There is something to suit every budget. There's also an Evaluation version that will let you try out all the features of the Professional version, but will add a trial banner to your SWF output.

ActiveSWF Free edition features include:
- shapes elements: ellipses, circles, squares, rectangles and polygons
- image elements
- texts elements, right text formatting support with HTML tags
- buttons and limited set of actions
- sounds
- solid fills

ActiveSWF Lite edition features include all ActiveSWF Free features plus:
- linear and radial gradient fills
- bitmap fills
- element positioning, moving, deleting

ActiveSWF Professional edition features include all ActiveSWF Lite features plus:
- sprites
- shape twining
- advanced audio and images compression capabilities

There is mention of an Advanced version (supporting Actionscript and Video) in the help files but I couldn't find any mention of it on the site.
Flash developers vs Content developers
A Flash developer looking at the feature list might be a little disappointed. Considering what Flash is capable of these days, the features read more like the back of the Flash 4 box did in 1999. Working with ActiveSWF requires a different mindset though. You have to put yourself in the shoes of a content developer. The key feature is that these Flash files are created dynamically. Because of this they can pull off a few tricks that even Flash Player 7 can't swing.

For example: Active SWF performs format conversion on audio and image files before embedding them in the SWF file. This allows you to source audio from WAV files or include image formats such as BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG or even WMF into your SWF file. You're never going to use this to build complex Flash sites but its a very flexible way of authoring content.

With Flash we're used to thinking about XML in terms of a data source (such as RSS) that you load in, parse then render. With ActiveSWF you have to think about XML in a slightly different way. It is still data, but in this context it is the DNA for the Flash movie itself.

Where this technology gets interesting is when you start to combine your image library with XML feeds from multiple sources. Start blending this little lot into dynamic SWF files and you'll soon have a pretty powerful content creation tool.

Using XML to create dynamic Flash is not a new idea (Macromedia Flex works this way) but ActiveSWF is aimed at content developers. It takes the pain out of creating SWF content. With a bit of thought you should be able to integrate ActiveSWF into a very powerful CMS system. And best of all it's free so go try it out!
Try out ActiveSWF

 

 

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