For several years now I've heard web agencies say (usually pretty adamantly) that there's no Content Management System (CMS) for Flash and that all updates are going to have to be done by a programmer. This may be a nice tactic for attracting clients to place money in your outstretched, open palm, but as someone interested in the technology at hand, I beg to differ...

As it seems with all technology today, web technology is hurdling along an astonishing rate of advancement. Rarely is this more apparent than when taking a look at back at some of the previous iterations of today's Internet's biggest and most influential websites. In recent years, some of the most interesting developments have been in the arena of animation. We've come along way since the animated .GIF, and techniques and libraries like AJAX and jQuery are making the use of Flash in simple situations less and less necessary. However, for complex animations, Flash is still king. Unfortunately, for companies that don't have an unlimited budget but want an engaging web presence AND control over the graphic elements, Flash poses some complicated problems. Or so it would seem.

Here in the Silverscape studio, we've been cooking up some pretty sophisticated (and really freakin' cool) solutions to this problem. For some clients looking to build a website, their design requirements call for a sophisticated homepage animation - something more than just a couple images fading in and out - BUT (it's a big "but") these clients often also want control over this animation. Now, we're used to giving clients control. We even LIKE doing it. That's why we built Common Goal WebManager and are working on Version 6 right now. But control over Flash elements? Well that's just...totally possible!!

Let's start with control outside of WebManager. For the recent build-out of LifeYield.com, Silverscape developed a custom Flash animation to quickly and concisely highlight some key advantages of the LifeYield ROI software application. The cool part, however, is the flexibility we were able to the team at LifeYield when it comes to modifying this piece. LifeYield is a relatively young start-up. As such, their brand and product positioning is likely to get tweaked here and there as they go to market. This all being said, LifeYield isn't about to pay everytime they want to edit some text in their Home Page Flash piece. The solution? Silverscape programmed this piece in such a way that it reads the text from a XML file. But that's just the start. Through this XML file, LifeYield can control not only the text itself, but also the text color, size, positioning, and even the timing with which the graphic elements transition - down to the millisecond.

Once we established that we could grant this type of granular control via XML, we took the next step and linked this in with Common Goal.I n the case of Walbridge, we've given them the ability to control the placement of the dots on their locations map by dragging them around on a version of the map within Common Goal. Also keep an eye out for the new homepage Flash piece for the upcoming website for The Walden Woods Project. The piece, designed by Arnold, will be fully controlled through an application in Common Goal WebManager. Once launched, site administrators will be able to turn on and off and edit video and text areas, control background imagery, and edit slide titles.

We get extremely excited about these types of projects and would love to get you (more?!) excited about them, too. So why haven't you called us yet?