With the sheer amount of files available I thought it’s about time to sift through them and pick the top 50 51 that we here at FlashDen feel are just great buys from the creative, design and value for money perspective. Just one thing before the showcase begins - regardless of whether or not your files are featured here EVERY member, and file, on FlashDen is important to us and we thank you for uploading all your work.

Here are 51 Amazing Flash Galleries that you can use on your website, blog or for your clients project, in no particular order -

3D Mosaic Flipping Slideshow by RimV

A Powerful Scrolling Gallery by Random

Accordion v1 (xml) by bobocel

3D Pic Tail by kudoshinichi

3D Multimedia Studio V1 - The Photo Package by RimV

Image Grid by dajovion

Image gallery zoomer by malik

Interactive Image Gallery FullScreen V2 by SaafiDesign

XML Fine Art Gallery by dxc381

Xml Image And Swf Gallery With Automatic Slideshow by smskserdar

Xml Gallery Image Resize Black by Albo

MediaGallery - XML Full Screen Slideshow by darkhouse

3D Photo Album Interactive by RimV

MD Slider v1 (AS3) by dabamol

Minimalist Gallery by rasterboi

NG Portfolio Viewer (xml) by nogrids

Paper Box Image Gallery by rehmatullah

Photo Inertia Gallery by Tidamz

Photo Portfolio by triworks

Resizable Portfolio Gallery w/Albums by OXYLUS

SIDEBAR XML ZOOM GALLERY V1.0 by damojo

XML Circle Gallery v1 by shuhankuang

ULTIMATE XML FULLSIZE GALLERY V1.0 by damojo

IgalleryX : Photo Stack Gallery by RimV

Header with thumbs by vamapaull

Horizontal Thumbnails Scroller by SaafiDesign

Horizontal Scroller Slideshow by nellie

Image Flipper XML CS3 by MasterBjorn

Full Browser Image Slider by Butters

Full Screen XML Gallery FLASH - V 1.1 by flashmaniac

FullGallery by Onza

Fully Customizable Advanced XML Image Gallery by skial

Photos Stack Xml driven slideshow by Tidamz

Gallery Scroller - Useful to slide Images by gimbanzi

PowerGallery Black by thatsasif

Products bulletin by kudoshinichi

Random Slideshow & Mirror Caption Effect by Albo

Grid Expandable Gallery by RimV

SimpleSlide 2 by ulfben

Banner - Alpha Transition Slideshow by potennza

Supreme Gallery by Emroni

The Alpha Slideshow v1 by Flash_Cart

The Looking Glass (V2) Looped XML Image Gallery by ChristianKragh

The yellow boat photogallery XML driven by quickyboy

XML 3D Image Menu Jumper Like Youtube Homepage! by webtechhost

Full Screen Background Pro : AS3 by Hink

XML Banner Rotator 3 by digitalscience

Client Area v1 by dajovion

CarouselDesigner v2 by jurgenv

Advanced XML Image Gallery by digitalscience

AS Gallery V1 by djankey

FlashDen members don’t forget to Stumble, digg and del.icio.us this post!

It’s pretty simple, without any bells or whistles, and he’s released the .FLA so you get to check out how Lee himself does some of his own backend development. Go ahead and check it out.

1. What I planned to do?
2. What I actually did?
3. What was the return on my efforts?

Simple and to the point.

You can get all fancy with flow charts, pie charts and graphs but I like to just use a note pad and tick stuff off. If you’re all digital, a folder on your desktop titled “MY LIFE” should grab your attention. The trick is to always keep it in view, that way you are constantly reminded of what you planned to do, what you are actually doing and what returns you are seeing on your efforts.

Since life likes to give us lemons now and then, you might see yourself veering off your list. Make a note of it and include it in your list of things to do. or even revising it as you go along. If you need to restructure your list go ahead and do it as long as you KNOW you can show a return for yourself on what you are adding and/or deleting.

Now, since we are rating ourself for the month past we have to get prepared for the month at hand. So here’s what I am doing right now so that I can give myself a good rating at the beginning of February for January. You still with me?

Right now I am -

1. Planning what I will be doing this month.
2. How I am going to do it.
3. What I expect as a return for my efforts.

When I get to February I will give myself 1 point {or a million if you prefer} for everything I followed through. If I get a 3 then, that means I’ve succeeded. Rinse and repeat.

My rating for December was a 2, yeah life gave me a few lemons. Hey, I never said I’m perfect

Very much like a company poised for success TokBox has big ideas but doesn’t disappoint with the details. Their site can be misleading to developers because the technology powering the site is actually their implementation of their own TokBox API. Ron says “Everything you see on their site can be accomplished through the API.” This includes otherwise challenging feats such as creating a video guestbook and video chat. Their big technological achievement comes through the streaming technology that they’ve confirmed can scale to millions of users in capacity.

To compare, Google released an extension to Gmail a couple months back that comes as a plugin download that will connect two parties with video chat. TokBox currently can handle six simultaneous conversations and to get started each person simply needs to have a camera/mic and visit a web page.

How do they accomplish this minor miracle? Flash, of course. Ron says “We use Flash because it’s dynamic…We want to focus on the user and do whatever will lead to the best user experience.” It also gives them a “rapid development cycle” and enables mashups such as combining your chat window with a YouTube video.

The platform allows developers to build anything from video recording widgets to robust applications and comes with some out-of-the-box embed components so you can drop TokBox onto an HTML page the same way you would any other widget.

This should be only the beginning for TokBox as we are finally entering the Jetsons era. Where’s my flying pod car?

What is Unity?

Unity is a multi-platform game development tool, designed from the start to ease creation. A fully integrated professional application that just happens to contain the most powerful engine this side of a million dollars.

You can see read more about the platform and it’s features here Unity 3D.

With the ability to deploy to web browsers, Nintendo Wii, iPhone and the iPod Touch the platform is well geared to position itself as an industry leader. If you install the web plugin available on this demo page, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Impressed? Yeah, now you know why I wrote this post.

Well, I figured this would be a great little tool to let our community know about as I’m “guessing” some of the developers would love to work on this kind of stuff.

Quick Feature Overview

With all the features this little schwing of a program comes with, here’s a taste.

Importing - You can import all major file formats. From your Photoshop templates to a full 3D models made in Maya, 3D Studio Max, Cinema 4D and many others importing all of them is a breeze. True Type Font support, audio files, textures and even scripts don’t pose a problem to Unity.

Scripting - Unity supports JavaScript, C# and a dialect of Python called Boo. Unity JavaScript runs 20 times faster than Flash or Director based JavaScript.

Multi Platform Publishing - Web browsers - check. OS compatibility - check. Nintendo Wii - check. iPhone & iPod Touch - check.

If you need more, you’ll find the full list of the features here.

Now you’re probably asking why would Flash need to do this? Well, think of the possibilities you have in front of you with a plugin that is already installed on close to 98% of all computers worldwide and you’ll see what I mean.

What do you think of Unity?

A lot of authors have been joining up on Envato marketplaces and I guess now is a good time as ever to sit down, make a few notes and see where you want to be this time next year.

It’s great to take some tips from your peers as they obviously have “been there, done that”. But it’s even better to formulate your own strategy of how you want to achieve a blessed state of life and work balance. Everyone will approach this topic differently as we are all at various points of time in our lives, with some giving priority to things others may be not. Which is perfectly fine, I find my priorities changing every 3 - 6 months. I blame the internet for that

So if you are a seasoned author, just getting into your own or a total newbie take the time now and laser focus on what you want to achieve and how you plan on getting there as an author on FlashDen. {did you know FlashDen does not have ANY files with “lasers” in them - I checked}

The site is growing by leaps and bounds and we expect 2009 to be a very eventful year and we hope you’ll be there for the ride.

Happy New Year everyone! See you in 2009!

Well, not really…but you get the idea.

Here is a list of some of the hottest WordPress plugins that employ Flash in some shape, form or matter. Some of the features of one plugin may overlap with another so some homework is required to figure out which works best for your needs.

Galleries

1. NextGen FlashViewer for NextGen Gallery - This plugin will let you show your photo galleries off in all their flashiness. NextGen Gallery is required to run this plugin.
2. Featurific - Although the main purpose of this is to show featured content in a Flash widget, you can pretty much use it as a gallery as well. The author has provided a lot of documentation as well as links to examples, under “Other Notes”, so you can see how it actually looks. The content is output in a Flash widget.
3. SimpleFlickr - This is a plugin for Wordpress that allows you to embed a Simpleviewer Flash Object integrated with a Flickr account.
4. Postcasa - Now you can show your Picasa albums by adding the standard Picasa EMBED slideshow, without needing any of the fancy code. It is designed for simple, but flexible use.
5. Post Videos and Photo Galleries - Putting the obvious SEO hijacking of the plugin name aside, this is a very helpful plugin. You can add videos, galleries and music clips very easily in a host of styles available from the plugin. The best part? You can host your content on a site that made this plugin called Cincopa.com {I agree, it might not be the best part for some people}. Check out the plugin page for more details.
6. Flashfader - This plugin allows you to put a Flash slideshow on your site. Image upload and configuration via the admin panel.

Media

1. Audio Player - It does exactly as the name stipulates. Features include configurable colour scheme, enclosure integration, runtime options such as autostart and loop and ID3 tag integration.
2. 1 Bit Audio Player - It’s main purpose is to act as a quick in-page preview for audio files you link to from your blog.
3. Wordphonic - Play MP3s on WordPress with the stylish and fully-customizable E-Phonic Flash MP3 Player.
4. pb Embed Flash - pb-embedFlash is a filter for WordPress to display any flash content in valid XHTML 1.0 Strict code offering the possibility to specify attributes and parameters individually. This plugin is quite extensive in its features, for full overview visit the plugin page.
5. WordPress Video Plugin - A filter for WordPress that allows easy video embedding of supported sites. Not as feature packed as the plugin above but it still has its uses.
6. swfObject - This plugin enables inserting Flash content into WordPress posts and pages with shortcode. The resulting embedded Flash implements the SWFObject library for XHTML compliance and cross-browser compatibility.
7. SlidePress - SlidePress manages embedding the presentation within the posts or pages of your site, handling all of the necessary code to make publishing simple. Features include - Manage multiple SlideShowPro galleries with unique styling options, support for styling presets with design templates, support for launching slideshows in thickbox windows and user level management for multiple user environments.
8. Hana FLV Player - Easily embed the FLV Flash videos in your WordPress blog. This comes with some free FLV players if you cannot pay for a commercial license of the JW Player.

Blog Enhancement

1. WP Flash Titles - Allows you to display your post titles in any font, colour and background colour. Comes with a selection of fonts to get you started. Slight template modification is required.
2. Flash Feed Scroll Reader - Flash Feed Scroll Reader is a Flash Feed Reader which allows horizontal scrolling. Set your options and call a php function <?php flashfeedscrollreader() ?> to show your feed scrolling in Flash.
3. Currency Converter - Use a Flash based currency converter on your blog. AJAX version also available.

Advertising

1. WP Amazon Carousel - This is a nifty little plugin that allows you to embed the Flash carousels that Amazon has as part of its affiliate program. A host of options are available to customize it as well. Just one thing bugs me and that is the author has not defined whether it can embed your affiliate code as well in the product links?
2. Page Peel - This plugin adds a Web 2.0 flash Page Peel Ad to your WP powered blog. It preloads big images so you won’t get a delay before displaying the image when you hover the ad like in ordinary Page Peel scripts.

Social Widgets

1. Make The Bunny Talk - Apparently there’s a bunny running around the internet and he also now has a Flash widget for WordPress run blogs/sites. You learn something new everyday. The widget allows your visitors to send you messages from your blog via the Nabaztag bunny.
2. WP Cumulus - WP-Cumulus allows you to display your site’s tags, categories or both using a Flash movie that rotates them in 3D. It works just like a regular tags cloud, but is more visually exciting.
3. WP Plugin Stats - A nice plugin for plugin developers to show their download stats in a Flash chart. A good ego booster for the coder in you.
4. Riffly Webcam Comments - Riffly is a web service that plugs into your site allowing visitors to create video/audio comments.
5. Seesmic WordPress Plugin - Seesmic does the same as Riffly above here. With this plugin you can record one or more Seesmic video’s to a post, allow for replies and threaded conversation, accept authenticated or anonymous video comments and moderate video comments exactly like text comments.
6. The Daily Dilbert - Like comics? This plug-in adds a Daily Dilbert Comic widget to the Sidebar, just drag-n-drop the widget into the sidebar to add it to your blog.
7. Umapper - A great plugin by Umapper.com to create maps for your blog, which can then be distributed via Flash embeds. Microsoft Virtual Earth, Google Maps, Yahoo and OpenStreet are all supported by this truly universal plugin.
8. Twitgets - Adds a sidebar widget to display your Twitter Friends Timeline using Twitter’s flash scripts. Beware of some of the widgets as you need some special data to get them to work properly.

Well there you have it! If you know of any cool plugins that I missed please leave a comment and I’ll add it in.

PatchPanel is a Flex extension that allows you to use your Actionscript skills to design extensions for other Adobe products. You could for example use it to draw a grid in Photoshop, or you could create concentric circles in Illustrator, or you could apply PixelBender filters to an image embedded in InDesign. How far can it go? Adobe’s not saying exactly but I would love to be able use Actionscript with comps in AfterEffects.

At it’s base PatchPanel is extending the existing DOM elements to Flash allowing you to access the pre-existing extension modules for Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Patch Panel is still in pre-release (it hasn’t graduated to beta yet) but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were to be a marketplace that hosts Flash extensions for Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign very shortly.

PatchPanel is Adobe’s “working title” so I thought it would be fun to come up with some names of what this technology should be called. My first thoughts were Photoshop Empire Extender Kit (PEEK) or Photoshop Fabu (compliments of my beautiful wife). What would you call it?

The service is provided by GizmoCall, a subsidiary of Gizmo5.com. You don’t need to download an app or perform a setup. All it requires is filling out a simple registration form and you can call any other member on the GizmoCall network for free as well as 800 numbers {presumably the 800 nos. will only work in the U.S}. For all other landline, and mobile phone calls, you will have to purchase call credits, just like Skype. Some of the rates do look competitive.

The service is new so I haven’t seen many reviews of it online. Naturally being made in Flash you can expect this to work across all computer platforms. I wonder if Skype will be taking this route soon enough? As I can imagine it is possible to do so.

You can even embed the app into your web page, have a look at it below -

I’m not sold yet on the interface as I’m sure there could be some enhancements, but the thing with the telephone is the keypad has hardly changed since it’s invention so the only enhancements one can think of is for the skin.

I have an idea? How about if GizmoCall allowed the skins to be customizable by users! I’m sure FlashDen would not mind having a “VOIP Skins” category.

photo credit: makelessnoise

First of all I would like to take this opportunity to wish all our authors, members, subscribers and daily visitors a very Merry Christmas from everyone here at the FlashDen.

Second, I thought I’d take a little tour around FlashDen and check out a few holiday type files from our fabulous authors. So here are 10 files I picked up to showcase in random order.

1. Magic Christmas Star by user barisintepe
2. Christmas Balls by user barisintepe {as well}
3. Christmas Snow Globe by user mottomoyoi
4. Christmas Decorative Set by user BOOJOO
5. Animated Christmas Background by user mottomoyoi
6. Spinning Christmas Trees by user martymccorkle
7. Christmas Web Card by user stoat
8. Bethlehem Scene by user mottomoyoi
9. Santa Claus Animation by user fernandov
10. Animated Snow by user barisintepe {I guess he likes the Holidays, that’s OK we do too!}

Enjoy your Holiday everyone!

*Image courtesy FlashDen user barisintepe.