10 replies to this topic

[Hans van der Maarel]

Some old-timers may remember me posting an interactive map that I'd done as a bit of a side project back in 2004. See this old thread for details (you know it's old because it has a 2-digit thread number).

Over the years, I tried to revisit it a few times in an attempt to learn Flash. But I have the Flash-evil-eye. Flash tutorials behave differently when I'm around and I can never seem to finish them.

So when Avenza launched MAPublisher 8 the other day, the first thing I did was try out the new Map Web Author tool, which helps you creating interactive Flash maps

 Picture_2.png   98.93K   136 downloads

See the map here

I know it's not a particulary impressive map, but I am very pleased with the Map Web Author, you don't need to know anything about Flash in order to make a map like this. It's actually got some more advanced features too, more samples showing those can be seen on Avenza's site

[frax]

The WHAT? Never heard of that band, I don't follow what the youth of today listen to...

This could also serve as a map for when the UK occupies north western Europe... like those WWII maps with the third reich flag all over the annexed countries...

[Matthew Hampton]

Nice map Hans! That's great the Avenza has picked-up the ball with respect to authoring Flash maps. I had always thought that someone would write an SVG map creation plug-in for Illustrator.

Sigh - I guess Flash won the "vectors on the web" battle. Now that Adobe has purchased Flash (Macromedia) - has SVG development screeched to a halt?

[ELeFevre]

Ah, the Who map reborn. Looks good. Ted gave me a demo of the Flash export at the ESRI user conference and I thought it looked pretty cool. Although, I'm much more excited about the other improvments such as the map crop tool, MP toolbar, et cetera. For some reason I'm holding off on downloading MP 8 for another week or two. Maybe it's because I'm 3/4 of the through a big project and I'm a little skiddish about making any changes.

[pghardy]

That awakens dormant memories. In the early 1970s, I was working as a programmer for a small Cambridge UK company called Laser-Scan. Originally, it built scanners for nuclear physics research, then graphics plotters, and later it became well known in the mapping industry for the Lasertrak line-following automatic map digitiser, and for the LAMPS suite of map production software. Its descendent company is still around as 1spatial.

Anyway, we had particular expertise in computer-controlled laser deflection systems, and used to get people coming from various industries wanting us to write on something with a laser beam. One such was someone wanting to engrave live pigs with a bar-code, so that the meat could be tracked through to bacon!

Another day, there was a visit from a group of long-haired characters who wanted us to write the name of the band on the clouds above their open-air concerts. The people were Pete Townsend, Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon and John Entwistle, and the band was 'The Who'! The other programmer (Martin Fulford) and I put together a demo to use a high-powered turquise argon-ion laser to write 'The Who' and some animated figures on the oposite wall of the building (I think I still have the program source code somewhere, written in PDP11 assembler).

Having proved the technical feasibility, the company turned down the opportunity - the managing director was not into rock music and was worried about liability if the laser zapped the eyeballs of audience or of low-flying aircraft. However a few people left the company and started up their own laser light-show business (LaserPoint), and ended up doing shows for Jean-Michel Jarre etc.

The same laser deflection system went on to be used in various mapping applications, including emergency mapping to locate aircraft emergency beacons, but that's another story.

Regards,

[Hans van der Maarel]

Another day, there was a visit from a group of long-haired characters who wanted us to write the name of the band on the clouds above their open-air concerts. The people were Pete Townsend, Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon and John Entwistle, and the band was 'The Who'! The other programmer (Martin Fulford) and I put together a demo to use a high-powered turquise argon-ion laser to write 'The Who' and some animated figures on the oposite wall of the building (I think I still have the program source code somewhere, written in PDP11 assembler).

Having proved the technical feasibility, the company turned down the opportunity - the managing director was not into rock music and was worried about liability if the laser zapped the eyeballs of audience or of low-flying aircraft. However a few people left the company and started up their own laser light-show business (LaserPoint), and ended up doing shows for Jean-Michel Jarre etc.

Now that's a cool story, thanks for sharing! Sadly the band has never asked me to do any maps for them

I suppose their lighting manager, John 'Wiggy' Wolff was involved in that as well. He was experimenting with lasers and holograms in the late 70s. Even had an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art in march/april 1977 and, from what I've gathered after some googling, pretty much wrote the book (a book anyway) on lasers and holography.

[Jimbo]

That's a pretty good looking map, just don't have that flag draped over Canada, (I'm pro Republic). But every time I see a countries flag being draped over other nations I think of the word annexation. But that's no worse then say Jonathan Wheelers logo of the US flag draped over Canada. So anyways where I'm going to get MaPublisher 8 will it allow for some sort of control for forms, or will I have to use Flash CS4 after I make the eventual upgrade from Design Standard CS3 to Web Premium CS4?

[Matthew Hampton]

In honor of this thread I am going to listen to Quadrophenia all day and use my little laser pointer to make cool designs on the wall.

[Hans van der Maarel]

So anyways where I'm going to get MaPublisher 8 will it allow for some sort of control for forms, or will I have to use Flash CS4 after I make the eventual upgrade from Design Standard CS3 to Web Premium CS4?

If you want to get really complex, I think you'll have to do that in Flash itself. Might be possible to do an HTML form in the popup bubble though, I'll have to try that I suppose people from Avenza might be better suited to explain what is and isn't possible.

Oh, and from what I've gathered, if you upgrade to Design Premium, you'll get Illy, Photoshop, Indesign, Acrobat Pro, Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks. So it's like the old Design and Web bundles stuck together. Web Premium is slightly cheaper but omits Indesign.

[Jimbo]

So anyways where I'm going to get MaPublisher 8 will it allow for some sort of control for forms, or will I have to use Flash CS4 after I make the eventual upgrade from Design Standard CS3 to Web Premium CS4?

If you want to get really complex, I think you'll have to do that in Flash itself. Might be possible to do an HTML form in the popup bubble though, I'll have to try that I suppose people from Avenza might be better suited to explain what is and isn't possible.

Oh, and from what I've gathered, if you upgrade to Design Premium, you'll get Illy, Photoshop, Indesign, Acrobat Pro, Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks. So it's like the old Design and Web bundles stuck together. Web Premium is slightly cheaper but omits Indesign.

So I get to keep InDesign CS3 while working with the other packages in CS4, oh well.

[Hans van der Maarel]

So I get to keep InDesign CS3 while working with the other packages in CS4, oh well.

No, Design Premium CS4 gives you most of what Web Premium CS4 does, plus Indesign. The only features of Web Premium it doesn't have are Contribute and Soundbooth.

I guess it's just Adobe's way of trying to make you buy the Master Collection...