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Impressive Blackstone Powered Flash Forms

I’ve been demonstrating basic use of Blackstone Flash Forms for a while now; little things like pop-up calendars, simple tab dialogs and accordion controls, grids and trees in forms, input masking, basic events, and more. All very cool looking, or so I thought. But several developers have commented that they’d not be able to use Flash Forms, that they’d be too limiting, they’d all look the same, and they’d not be of any use in real-world applications.
Well, today, after viewing examples of what some of the beta testers have already built with Flash Forms, I beg to differ. I saw forms that looked as unique as the sites that they were part of, forms that provided real and incredibly useful functionality, forms that went further than any of us imagined this feature capable of.
I’m going to see if I can arrange to get some of those examples to post here, seeing is believing.

8 responses to “Impressive Blackstone Powered Flash Forms”

  1. Scott Barnes Avatar
    Scott Barnes

    heh, I am one of those developers who is a sceptic on Flash Forms – having said that, i’m open to adjustment in my thinking.
    It would be good if you could gather them up to show & tell, i’ll check out the beta forums for em aswell but yeah public viewing would be good.

  2. John Farrar Avatar
    John Farrar

    Ditto… I like the idea… but to have the flash forms be skinned and not just "unique" would be my goal. If you achieved this you will have my code using flash forms in a snap! Looking foward to the demos!

  3. PaulWeston Avatar
    PaulWeston

    I’d love to see some skinning examples too. If the examples come with pointers on HOW they did it, that’d be great.
    – PaulWeston

  4. Trond Ulseth Avatar
    Trond Ulseth

    My greatest consern is that ther is no equalent to <input type="file"> in flash forms.

  5. M. Schopman Avatar
    M. Schopman

    I am interested in what you have 🙂 I am not sceptic just experienced with web interfaces.

  6. Ben Forta Avatar
    Ben Forta

    TYPE="file" can’t be supported until the Flash player itself supports it. That’s a limitation we have to live with for now.
    As for skinning, honestly, until I see the code I don’t know exactly how they did what they did, but the forms I saw looked nothing like the halo you usually see.
    With folks starting to take time off it could take a little while to get this al together, but I will try and post stuff shortly.

  7. John Avatar
    John

    Flash File Upload
    http://www.flashcfm.com/tutorial_search.cfm?keyword=file%20upload
    Uploaded December 07, 2001 12:00PM
    A simple file uploading tutorial using JavaScript, Flash and CF. An file field is stored in a hidden frame and is referenced from Flash using JavaScript. It”s a nice workaround but right now only works in IE. Hopefully developers will build on this tool to create a fully functional uploading system using a Flash front end.
    I’ve never tried it.

  8. Trond Ulseth Avatar
    Trond Ulseth

    There is also a very interesting file upload utility for Flash at http://sourceforge.net/projects/yamzbrowser (can also be used in Flex)
    If it was somehow possible to use this one in BS Flashforms – that would be great. I imagine though that this might be tough – I’m not on the beta so I have not tried.
    ps – while I’m in here let me use the chanse to say thank you for the WACK book Ben. Looking forward to the next one (will it also deal with mach-ii, design patterns and other OO snack?)

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