The JW Player will accept many different flashvars in the programming of your html. (Flashvars are various variables that you can enter into your embedded HTML coding to change your JW player functions and also the appearance of it. Settings of flashvars can be created and accessed through plug-ins and java scripting.

Main site
http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/

This is the link that leads to the different flashvars variables that you can change in the coding.

http://developer.longtailvideo.com/trac/wiki/FlashVars#API

The API in this flash player leaves lots of room for editing and changing. The API internally through plugins built through actionscript and externally through javascript.

http://developer.longtailvideo.com/trac/wiki/FlashApi

You can view a number of tutorials here.

http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/tutorials

A list of example where you can view the source code.

http://developer.longtailvideo.com/contributors/nyboe/index.html

Flash/Actionscript players

General Information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript

http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/flash_api_reference.html

Tutorials

http://republicofcode.com/tutorials/flash/as3xmlvideoplayer/

http://kriggio.wordpress.com/2007/06/06/a-super-simple-flv-player-using-actionscript-30/

http://www.lemlinh.com/as3-video-player-tutorials-roundup/

Flowplayer

Demo site

http://flowplayer.org/demos/index.html

Flowplayer API

http://flowplayer.org/apidoc/

Download Link

http://flowplayer.org/download/index.html

Plugins

http://flowplayer.org/plugins/index.html

My Example Page

http://www.dzinery.com/flowplayer_example/examples.html

Setup/Configuration

Installing WordPress is incredibly easy and it often takes one click of a button to have it installed. Many hosting companies offer this one click installation that will have you up and running a default WordPress blog in minutes. Even if the one click installation is not available, you can simple download the appropriate files from WordPress.org and upload them manually to your server. WordPress will then guide you through a simple installation procedure creating all the necessary databases for you.

Customization

When signed into the dashboard, simply clicking on Theme under the appearance category will give you a wealth of new looks for your blog. They’re hundreds of designs available and each one can be further customized using CSS. In addition to that you can look under the plug-in section and add more customized widgets to provide additional functionality and personality to your blog/site. Customizing a theme can be a bit daunting for some, and strong knowledge in CSS is required to get the exact look you want.

Authentication

This is where the real strength in WordPress comes to play. Being a blogging platform it thrives on user interaction and input. One thing you don’t want is spammers writing offensive comments on your site. WordPress gives you full control on who can post comments or stories. The admin can even have the option to approve any comments before they become live. WordPress has broken down user roles into 5 categories and these ensure that the admin has full control of the content on the blog:

• Administrator – Somebody who has access to all the administration features
• Editor – Somebody who can publish posts, manage posts as well as manage other people’s posts, etc.
• Author – Somebody who can publish and manage their own posts
• Contributor – Somebody who can write and manage their posts but not publish posts
• Subscriber – Somebody who can read comments/comment/receive newsletters, etc.

Content Control

Anyone who has ever made a post using WordPress knows how easy it really is. If you know how to using a word processor then this should be no different. It gives you all the basic functionalities of a Word Processor to quickly and easily post content to specific pages or posts. The best part is, that once content is published you can simply go back to your original page in the Dashboard and make any changes you want. Literally anyone can use this system to maintain a website. In addition, you can also add images, sounds, videos and more.

Professional/Social networking integration

With the abundance of social networking sites available, wouldn’t it be nice to have them all connected with your blog/site? Well, once again thanks to WordPress plug-ins, this is easily attainable. Any Social Networking sites you can think of will most likely have some sort of WordPress integration available. For example, there is a twitter application that will allow you to update your twitter status based on a WordPress blog post. There is another application for WordPress that will display your tweets right on your blog with links to your twitter profile. The possibilities are endless to connect with people all over the world and WordPress can bring all of them to one place.

Managing Media Assets

The media library inside WordPress makes managing media on your blog/site very easy. You can manage your videos, images, audio etc using this tool. There is no need to delete files or add files using an ftp program like leech. You can add, delete and view your media using this great tool and everything is done automatically for you. The media manage tool can also resize files for you. When you’re ready to upload the media on to a post or a page, you just access your media manager, find the file you wish to insert and click on insert into post. No html coding or any web coding required!

For my personal programming portfolio blog I was able to experiment more deeply with a basic theme called “thematic”. They’re plenty of excellent themes available, but this one gives you a very basic look with plenty of options. I changed almost every aspect of the thematic theme to get the look I wanted. There is literally nothing on the theme that can’t be changed. By doing this, it strengthened my skills and confidence in CSS. I was getting used to good ol’ Dreamweaver guiding me through my website designs. It’s easy to forget how all the back-end code works when Dreamweaver is there. For this assignment it challenged my knowledge to read and change CSS without a WYSIWYG editor and I think the results where positive.

Using WordPress for basic websites (and of course blogs) in the future has been something I’ve considered since my introduction to it. It makes a great way to design a simple website and present the client with an easy to understand content management system. I actually have a potential client that wishes to create a blog and WordPress was my first suggestion to them.

It’s pretty self-explanatory, but in this video we create and program two buttons in flash with two different methods. The first example shows the code being entered on the button object itself. In the second example we talk to the button on the 1st frame by using its “instance name” and then tell it what to do. Both methods work exactly the same and there is differing opinions on which method is the best. It’s all a matter of opinion and what makes sense to you.

Example One:
on(release){
gotoAndStop(20);
}

Example Two:
frame20_btn.onRelease=function(){
gotoAndStop(20);
}

[flv:/wp-content/media/makingbuttons_2.flv 480 368]

Flash can be a great tool when used correctly and can create fantastic interactive sites that are just not possible with transitional HTML. That being said, they’re negatives to Flash that must be considered. Here are a few to think about when building a Flash only website.

1. Back and forward buttons on a browser will not work within a flash site. The back button will take you right back to the page you viewed prior.
2. Although they’re getting better, a search engine has trouble finding and reading a Flash only web site.
3. Flash sites are difficult to change and update. You must own a copy of flash to edit the file which can cost significant money. HTML can be edited with Notepad or any similar program.
4. Slow load times and bandwidth concerns
5. Cannot bookmark within a specific section of the site
6. Users can not use the right mouse button for image saving etc.
7. In many cases, Flash sites have cumbersome navigation
8. Majority of mobile phones cannot display Flash content.
9. Accessibility problems for impaired users.
10. Printing issues