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Creating a Dynamic Screen Saver Using Macromedia Flash
If your organisation has or needs a standard company screen saver why not utilise it to its fullest extent by displaying pertinent news and articles to your staff which can be dynamically and centrally updated with the latest information.
In this article we are going to look at creating an animation in Macromedia Flash, dynamically loading XML data into it in the form of news headlines and then converting it into a screen saver that can be loaded onto the desktops across your organisation. You can also use this article if you just want to create a news ticker for your web site which is updated via an XML file - this could even be via an RSS feed from another web site.
- Open the .fla file in the zipped file.
- Click on the first scene on the Script layer. Make sure you have the Actions windows displayed to view the action script that is doing all the work (Window> Development Panels> Actions).
- On the line:
headlineXML.load("http://www.digislate.co.uk/uploads/Headlines.xml");
you need to change the location here to the one where you want to store your xml file.
- Store the xml file in the relevant place and then publish .fla to .swf - test it out to check its picking up the headlines.
Next you are going to want to convert the .swf file to an .scr file so it can be used as a screen saver. There are loads of cheap products out there that will do this for you, however not all of them are going to operate properly with action scripting. One that did and is pretty cheap is called Flash ScreenSaver Master which you can download a trial of from http://www.flash-screen.com/screensavermaster/.
Obviously the flash is a bit basic and un-animated but you can bring in your own animation to jazz it all up a bit.
There are a few things you need to note regarding connectivity and the screen saver you create. The most critical being that a personal or company firewall may block communications with the dynamic content. If the user has "Password protected" (or "Return to Welcome Screen" on XP) checked in the Screen saver control panel, this can be problematic as the firewall alert window may appear behind the screen saver. In these instances users or the network administrator are going to have to configure their setups to all this.
You should also test the screen saver on various operating systems required, Windows 98, 2000, XP, NT etc since this has only been tested on Windows XP.
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