Well it has been a slice as they say. Flash 99% Good has been a labor of love for many years, but alas my love has grown cold for maintaining this blog.  Moving hosts, getting hacked a few times, and general lack of time have brought me to the conclusion that it is time to put the blog to rest as they say. I must thank everyone for their comments and encouragement over the years. Flash 99% Good taught me as much as I hope it has taught the internet community about usability and all things Flash. After I clean out the spam/crude from the comments I am going to switch the site to a flat file HTML site that is read only. I plan to leave it up for historical purposes and maybe the information here can bring use to someone in the future. Once again, thank you everyone for your help. You can still follow our work over at airgid.com

cheers, Kevin Airgid

The Fleb framework looks like an interesting project. It sounds a lot like the Gia framework, but with dynamic multi-language support. Out of the box it also supports SEO and the back button. The documentation so far looks straight forward. This project is still in development but it looks very promising. So far at first blush it looks very “interactive designer friendly”, so I other words you don’t need a masters degree in AS3 to use the thing. We will keep an eye on this project.

A new blog (Flash CMS info) is out (details about who is behind it are sketchy as there is no contact info., and they used one of those “whois” privacy controls on the domain, this always makes it suspect in my opinion) But it seems to be a good resource for Flash CMS’s that are out there. Although it may turn into one big ad for a “paid” CMS of choice, these type sites often do that after they get decent traffic. (Not that I’m helping by linking too it!). But never the less a good place to start on your hunt for a CMS for Flash.

Sidebar: Got to love it, a site dedicated to Flash CMS’s … but using WordPress as the CMS. Once again, loads of talk about Flash CMS tools but no one wants to eat their own food! Hmmmmmmm!

Even though I have been using the ‘internets’ since the days of Mosaic and my 2400 baud modem things still never seem to amaze me. For instance, if you google the term “Open Source Flash CMS” it seems Google loves this site. Why I don’t know because my article on the topic is rather shallow, and it seems no many people have written about this topic, or the blogs they write on have low Google Rank. Needless to say I’ve decided to help the ‘internet’s along by providing a list of open source Flash CMS’s here. The list is short, but maybe this will help in your search …

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.

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.

If Flash is so darn good? Why isn’t this site “Flash 99% Good” built in Flash. Well the answer to that question is pretty simple. $$$ Money-mula-cash! Yep, that’s right for various reasons I’m going to explain why this site doesn’t use Flash. First off you would think that a site that “talks” about Flash Usability would be dripping with flash embed code all over the place… nope not here. Like many interactive designers I have learned that Flash has it’s place.