* Amara Flash Software development tools
I’ll admit that my recent love affair with all things Flash may be a little over the top but given the fact is that Flash content is so powerful and so effective (not to mention that it can be viewed by around 95% of Web users) my obsessing on it seems wholly reasonable.
Anyway, today I have our last installment of Flash tools (at least for a while) with which you can make your Web content stand out from the crowd.
Our subject today is a collection of Flash tools from Amara Flash Software (see editorial links below). This collection consists of four Flash development tools: A Flash news ticker, a Flash menu builder, a Flash intro and banner builder, and a Flash slideshow builder.
All of the tools use a similar paneled and tabbed user interface to make building Flash content as simple as possible and include a small internal preview panel. You can also launch your default Web browser to preview the Flash content externally. When you are happy with the layout, you save the content and the code that will be embedded in your Web page is generated.
With all of the tools, you can choose the background color (or make it transparent), choose the font, character color and style, associated sounds, effects for transitions between items, timing and speed of effects, and assign links to individual items as well as specifying the link target (_blank, _parent, _self, or _top).
The Amara Flash News Ticker creates horizontal and vertical Flash news tickers with the ticker data embedded or in an XML data feed. The latter is a great feature because you can edit the XML content and then update the ticker by simply reloading. You can also specify the scroll direction (horizontal, vertical, random, or typewriter style).
The Amara Flash Menu and Button Maker creates horizontal and vertical menu systems that can “unfold” either on mouse over or on mouse click with lots of choices for button style, colors, and behaviors.
The Amara Flash Intro and Banner Builder creates text displays that are intended for use as splash screens or banners. The tool includes a selection of text effects and you can control the timing of individual text item entry, dwell, and exit.
Finally, the Amara Flash Slideshow Software does what you might guess, building either an automatic slideshow or one with user controls. You can apply transition effects to either all slides or to each slide individually.
These are terrific tools that will save you a lot of time when you want basic Flash functionality. Pricing for Amara Flash News Ticker is $19.95, Amara Flash Menu and Button Maker is $29.95, Amara Flash Intro and Banner Builder is $39.95, and Amara Flash Slideshow Software is $29.95. Volume discounts are available.
