A new Flash CMS has appeared on the scene: Flashmoto. Once again it is a Flash CMS that uses “Flash” as the main UI to edit Flash.  The interface of the CMS is very well polished. Dialog boxes are well labeled and it seems to have a easy enough user interface. I signed up for a beta and spent some time playing around. One test that I use for how easy a CMS is to use is the “Famous 5 minute Test” basically if I can’t get new pages created and edited in under 5 minutes the UI is not so good. How does Flashmoto perform in the “Famous 5 minute Test”? well, I could create new objects and edit existing things, but adding new pages seem to allude me. (Maybe it requires a smarter user than me!, and keep in mind this is very beta software!) The developer for the project has some great plans for the software. I’m told it will support deep linking, SEO and the back button may actually

I recently started using a gem of software called “Skitch”. Basically what it does is enables you to take a screen capture of anything on your screen.   While this by it’s self is not revolutionary, what makes Skitch so amazing is how easy it is to get a screen capture of something from the screen into your website or blog. In fact this blog post is the first use of this tool with WordPress. Basically this is how easy this software is to use:

I have done a lot of looking around for a low-cost (or free open source Flash CMS) sadly, there is nothing like WordPress for managing content in Flash. Most Flash CMS systems are either hard to use or not well documented (or very expensive). This is not the case for FlashLoaded’s “Flash CMS“. Like all of FlashLoaded components you can expect high quality well documented tools to speed up your Flash development.

When it comes to the Macintosh platform, users options for email clients are somewhat limited. There are several open source programs, but many of them are seriously lacking in robust business features.   I guess you could say that I “drank the Kool-Aid” about open source applications. I love Firefox, and it’s amazing array of extensions, so I assumed that this love fest would also apply to Thunderbird. To an extent Thunderbird is the best open source email client one can get. From a business standpoint I find Thunderbird to very limited for many reasons.

More and more I have clients who want to update elements in Flash…. and more and more I find it hard to find Flash CMS (content managment systems) that aren’t either too expensive, or just plain hard to use. This article really isn’t a review of Flash CMS systems… (since I’ve never used any of these products) … It is more of a run down about my casual observations using demos.

With out further a do… here is my list (please email me if you know of more to add to this list). First I want to clarify what I mean by expensive… “expensive” means any CMS system over $5,000 bucks USD.

• Google Search for the term “Flash CMS”
• Atomz – This seems to be a custom solution… and I’m sure it’s super expensive.
• b82CMS – Seems well priced, but the interface leaves something to be desired…
• Flash Blocks – Price is good… interface ..hmm “ok”… worth a look. Here is a post from someone who is using FlashBlocks… not so positive for us non-actionscript kiddies.
• Digital Publishing Tool – Price? – Interface?? no demo online… but the site is well done. Hopefull the CMS is the same?
• ComaTool – Has a great feature set.. price? , usability?
• There are some rumors that Macromedia Contribute will soon be able to edit Flash!!

Note: I’ve done a review of FlashLoaded CMS here.

June 16-2009  Update:
Who knew this simple blog post would become so popular. It is now the 3rd link in Google when you search for the term “Flash CMS”. This is extra attention has made Flash CMS vendors wanting to post stuff here like mad.  I’ve turned off “comments” on this post because I just don’t have the time to process all the requests. If you would like to sponsor this post or this site contact me.

Sorenson Media has released Squeeze 4.2 (free upgrade for 4.0 users!) Supports the new Flash video format for Flash 8.0. Seems like a good upgrade!

Just purchased Macromedia Studio 8. I must say this is the best value-for-the-money upgrade I’ve ever done lately. Macromedia has actually made the Flash Authoring environment faster and more productive. There are alot of new featueres that will help benefit usability as well. These features are not per-say "usability" features, but they will encourage better design practice among developers. I won’t list all the features here… you can go to the mother ship and learn more.

Dreamweaver 8 is also a must have upgrade. The new CSS features, along with the enhanced FTP is also a must have upgrade. Once again Dreamweaver seems faster and more stable. Everything seems quicker, right from menu response to applying actions. All and all Studio 8 gets a 4 out of 5 Stars!

Fresh out! If you’re freelancing or considering doing so, Kevin Airgid just put out in a neat little book his over a decade worth of experience working solo. The topic covers what I call, a need rarely catered to: the business side of (web) design. To me, as far as I’m concerned, these hands-on pearls are valuable to all disciplines that require, at one time or another, you being da man (or woman) of the situation.

Or transform files into secure compact PDFs for e-mailing, archiving, and printing. FlashPaper 2 is an affordable solution to create web-ready documents easily that can be shared on any website. I have found Flash Paper 2 to be faster than Adobe Acrobat. Also Flash Paper documents can be read by more browsers than Acrobat because the Flash player has a larger install base.

FlashPaper generates compact, fast-opening Flash documents that can be published to any website using Macromedia Contribute, Dreamweaver, or any other HTML tool. FlashPaper creates Flash documents through intuitive Microsoft Office integration and file drag and drop. Create Flash documents that are immediately available cross-platform on any web browser. Compact Flash documents open within a web page, eliminating the need for a separate viewer application. Flash documents can also be incorporated into Flash projects.

Best Part!
Empower Flash developers to manipulate the Flash document user interface. Flash designers can load and control documents in Flash projects and customize which user interface elements are displayed with an updated ActionScript API.

Macromedia gave a sneak peak of Flash 8.0 in Japan recently. Among the new things displayed are some rather cool real time bitmap effects. The killer add-on seems to be the text rendering engine which has been greatly improved. This should make reading text in Flash much better. Also another improvement seems to be the player engine is much faster (even on a Mac which as far as I have been concerned has been way to slow compared to the Windoz). Only draw back is what will be the market penetration of v8.0… version 7.0 is still lack luster for my likes… At any rate Colin Moock has posted links to video of the presentation.