Here is the overview of the most popular payment rates systems. We want you to vote for the one that you find the best:

Author type: Exclusive Grid and Non-exclusive Flat Rate

Author type means you have to make a decision at the very registration:

• If you choose to be an exclusive author – you have a nice payment rate growth grid, depending on your overall sales volume;
• If you pick a non-exclusive author – you have a flat payment rate, no matter how much you sell.

Author type: Exclusive Grid and Non-exclusive Grid

Again you choose your account type, but now your options are slightly different:

• If you choose to be an exclusive author – you have a decent start percentage and quick growth to a maximum value;
• If you pick a non-exclusive author – you still have the grid, but the starting point is much lower, and you got to make a lot more sales to have your percent grow.

Flash Files Diversity: Payment Rate Per Component

This way you can have 2 types of flash components under single author account. You can set your components to be exclusive, or either you can choose a non-exclusive option. Each component has its own payment rates grid since then, and those grid is dependent on the sales volume of this particular flash file.

• By setting a component to exclusive it gets a high starting payment rate and a fast growing grid;
• Non-exclusive components have very low starting payment rate and a much slower grid.

Flash Files Diversity: Payment Rate Per Group

Means that you can have 2 groups of components, exclusive ones and non exclusive ones. Each group has it’s own grid, which is dependent on the sales volume of all components in this group.

• Exclusive components group has a more beneficial grid;
• Non-exclusive components have a less beneficial grid.

Here’s a little secret for you. Once we have the results – we’ll redo our current payment system here at FlashScope to fit your needs :)

Please help us to promote this post by clicking the “Like” button.

If you enjoy observing good practices of flash button design, you may also like the following showcases of flash files:

• Flash Templates by Artin2ition. Personal Showcase
• Showcase of Spectacular Flash Files
• 15 Flash Preloaders Expensive As Hell

Beautiful And Original Flash Buttons

Jabra

Kick-Ass

Our Type

PIIQ Sony

Nespresso Tanzaru

10 Downing Tweets

Wishbone Design

faceOff

Climb Mount Asgard Game

Bell Better Service

Restezen Forme

Cut it out for change

Djeco

Million baby crawl

FlashScope Magic Buttons Flash Component

FlashScope Aqua Buttons Flash File

MediaNovak

Puppet Brain

Hellozeto

Joby Sessions Photography

Social media is now taking over the internet! What used to be the first thing that you open in your browser once it’s launched? It was Google, or your favorite blog, or some web mail. What happens now? The majority of browsers have FaceBook as their homepage! And there’s no surprise – the whole online life moved from chats, forums, blogs into social accounts!

I must admit that having a well configured FaceBook account is beneficial in many ways: you can communicate with any of your friends quick & easy, you can share things with the rest and see what they are sharing with you, you can join pages & communities to stay up to date with specific topics, etc.

All the big brands have joined FaceBook long ago: Coca Cola, Nike, Mercedes, McDonald’s – name any and I’m sure it’s there! Actors, artists, movies, restaurants, products – everyone and everything is on FaceBook this days!

What’s so special about FaceBook? Why do marketers love it so much? All simple – it’s an extraordinary marketing opportunity, it’s a great way to get in touch with your target audience and it helps a lot in terms of feedback! It’s a lot easier to create a worldwide “Sandwich Lovers” club on FaceBook, than trying to make a real one!

The time has come and FlashScope marketing team has launched a personal FaceBook page for our marketplace!

I’m sure you want to know why you should click those “Like” button and become a fan of our page. So here are just a couple of reasons:

• news about FlashScope marketplace;
• our contests;
• giving out flash files for free;
• exclusive payment rates and author commission offers;
• all the latest flash news;
• useful Flash, Flex & ActionScript tutorials;
• flash videos selection;
• lots of funny stuff.

All above is just a tiny part of what we’re going to use our FaceBook page for in future! The choice is obvious! “Like” our page and be informed of what’s happening at FlashScope as well as in the whole Flash industry!

FlashScope on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FlashScope
FlashScope on Twitter: http://twitter.com/flashscope

Today’s showcase is more prosaic, but still awesome. We want to share with you the premium flash templates that were created by one of our top artists – Artin2ition. They can be easily found at FlashScope in between the flash files.

We are proud to have Artin2ition in our authors team and we hope you’ll like their works just as much as we do.

#1 Jungle XML flash photo portfolio

First of all I really like the color theme of this flash XML template, looks like a mixture of the golden sand and the dirt. Originally this flash template was designed to showcase photos along with some of your comments on them. The pages, that are responsible for photos are Gallery and Projects. Each of the pages has its unique outfit and can be easily edited with XML files.

#2 Photo Model Personal Website with XML Gallery

There’s no secret that it’s a model agency flash template in front of you. You can guess it at a first glance. This XML template is equipped with every needed aspect to host a portfolio of your models. It has an animated header and supports full screen, which adds a more professional feel to your website.

#3 Hotel Business Flash XML

This hotel business flash template is nothing without your gorgeous pictures. It was made to have your visitors concentrated on the hotel that you own, but not the beauty of website template design. As soon as you insert the professional photos of your hotel by means of XML you’ll see how perfectly they’ll fit this flash XML template.

#4 Advanced Sollutions XML Business Template

In case you have a strong brand and a recognizable logo – you should definitely consider this flash template. It puts your logo in the very center of the template making it the core part of the design. The overall style of this business XML template is pretty restrained, and that allows you to use it no matter what kind of business you run.

#5 XML Plus advanced flash template

This is the very first XML template that was uploaded to our marketplace. It’s main advantage is that this flash template does not have a specific theme, so it can be used whatever website you are aiming to run.

So basically those are the best flash templates that we have at FlashScope right now. But we really hope that as we keep evolving, some more great authors will join our marketplace and we’ll showcase their works just as we did that for Artin2ition.

Flash CS5 for iPhone – you got it but you can’t touch it

No doubt, support for iPhone applications was the most anticipated feature in this release. Sadly, but what was once a dream opportunity is now a practically useless capability. The matter is that applications made with Flash will be no longer available for iPhone OS4. And it’s doubtful that Apple will distribute such apps. There is nothing left else for us to do but wait and see how the big As’ jostling turns out.

Coding experience improved

For a long time the code editor in Flash didn’t get enough attention from Adobe. Finally FCS5 changes the situation and the coding experience in Flash has been considerably improved with a few new features. For instance, the code editor now allows the auto-completion for any classes you import into the application. It has also full support for code hints (it works for all properties, parameters and methods) which makes the process very similar to that in Flash Builder. We bet, you will especially love the automatic closing of brackets. These nice additions are going to boost your workflow greatly.

Speaking of other enhancement, we can’t pass by the new code snippets panel. This feature is something many developers have been missing for a long time. Now you can insert commonly used ActionScript code into your project with ease. For example, by simply selecting an object on stage and double clicking on “Rotate Contineously” in the code snippets panel, you can add infinite rotation support to that object. You can also add your own code snippets by editing an XML file.

The new file formats

Flash CS5 shows the debut of the FXG2 format. Comparing to its CS4 forerunner FXG 1.0 it’s much more accurate in sharing of content between different Adobe tools.  Adobe Flash Professional now also uses an XML-based file format  XFL, which is basically a compressed folder of all the assets and XML metadata describing your Flash project. This feature improves the process of creating content compatible with Flash using the third-party tools.

Text Layout Framework

The new Text Layout Framework engine drastically increases the number of text editing options. Now it’s a native part of the Flash IDE and you can handle and arrange text using the standard Text Tool. Besides the wide range of text layout and formatting options that can be applied to TLF text fields, support for manipulating linked containers is also included. With TLF one you can link two text fields together so that they behave like one text field. This is a great feature for some complicated text layouts. Plus, the new FCS5 also includes an easy to use tool for embedding fonts in your swf.

Mobile Support

Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 enable to take advantage of such typical for mobile phones things as accelerometers, gestures and multitouch. To give this an appropriate support Flash CS5 comes with an upgraded version of Device Central that lets you to test these functions without having to upload the application to the mobile phone. This could make the process of basic testing faster and easier.

Video powered up

Flash Professional CS5 shows some improvements in the video experience. Probably the greatest thing about CS5 is that you can play the video right on the stage. Moreover, this video can be manipulated while playing. You can select and change the player skins all while the video is playing. You can also add cue points which will automatically have their time adjust to the current time of the video as it goes.
The aforesaid features are among the major improvements in Flash CS5, but surely they are not exhaustive. No doubt, Flash CS5 is a huge step forward and will make life for flash programmers so much easier. This is a must have for devs using Flash in the daily work. Although CS5 might not bring as many core features as CS4 did (3D and IK), it is still a huge upgrade worth getting.

Preloaders

Even though modern flash website load fast, it usually takes up to a minute before a user can access the content on a flash site. By creating a fancy preloader you can not only inform visitors about how much time a website needs to load, but you can also entertain them and thus, make them stay longer on the site. Here are some cool examples:

RVLT

Dalegenser

Erky Perky

Canvas

Martin Anderle

Cloudraker

Ilovedust

Menus

Another category of flash files that requires a good portion of deliberation is menu. Remember that it is the main navigation mechanism on any site, so designing a menu bar it’s important to balance creative approach and usability. If you make menu too tricky and heave on visual effects, a user will get nothing except confusion and as a result, will leave a site immediately. You can see some great examples of menus that are both attractive and easy to use below:

Ma Dame

Wicked Pixels

D10Studio

GREY Group

WebWork

Manak’s online portfolio

Ruy Adorno

Yodabaz

Content sliders

Content slider is another form of navigation flash files which is a perfect way to display practically all sorts of content, such as images, featured sections, portfolios, etc. Sliders are good focal points as they can quickly grab the users’ attention and allow them to browse and sort through information at ease. The following examples can hint you at some creative and clever content slider solutions.

Fat Man Collective

Barrys Tickets

Megan Fredrich

Cloudraker

Vanio Ivanov

Puppetbrain

formag.sk

Of course, a flash website is much more than just a preloader, a menu and a slideshow gallery, but these flash files are definitely the points to take into account while creating a worthy flash website.

On March 22 Adobe officially announced the product versions of Flash Builder 4, Flex 4 and ColdFusion Builder. This is some great news for the flash dev community as Beta versions proved that Flash Builder and the new Flex SDK are powerful tools to enhance developer and designer workflow. The just launched final versions were significantly improved to enable developers to gain the best in development time, integration and building more expressive applications.

Flash Builder 4 comes with over 90 new features, such as event code generations, a new Package Explorer, getter-setter generation, support for ASDoc tooltips right in the IDE, just to name a few. All these are intended to boost your coding speed and therefore, make the workflow more effective.

Among other important upgrades are a full overhaul of the Eclipse based editor, new data services browser and Network monitor that can help you debug network traffic such as AMF services. As you know, Flex Builder has been re-branded Flash Builder which is going to give people a clear idea about the scope of what that product does.

One of the most important things introduced within Flex 4 is a new component and skinning architecture called Spark. It brings an expressiveness of RIA applications to a whole new level in addition to supporting the new Flash Catalyst to Flash Builder workflow.

Adobe’s new release brought some piece of joy to ColdFusion community too as they finally got a decent IDE. It is based on Eclipse and includes a full line by line debugger that supports breakpoints. The new CF IDE is deeply integrated with ColdFusion 9, plus integration between ColdFusion Builder and Flash Builder makes it fast and easy for CF developers to create Flex applications. The best part about it is that purchasing the premium version of Flash Builder, you’ll also get CF Builder and vice versa.

Still doubting whether you should buy new Adobe products? To clear up everything, look at this comparison chart created by Adobe that includes features of Flex Builder 3, Flash Builder Standard, Flash Builder Premium, and the Flex 4 SDK.

You can download the products here.

One of the best things about Unity is that it’s accessible for both professional and non-expert users. Thus, if you are a decent game designer but you programming skills are your weak point, Unity engine can fill those gaps pretty well. Here are the main features making this possible:

• Integrated development environment with visual editing, drag and drop interface and live game preview.
• Universal web player available both for Mac OS and Windows and works in all browsers.
• All the impressive performance speed and great 3D rendering is built with JavaScript and C# only. In other words, Unity-powered games work on iPhone which is definitely an advantage in terms of Apple-Adobe intrigues of today.

• Supports many popular 3D modeling applications, including free Blender, low-cost Cheetah3D and expensive Maya and 3ds Max.
• Powerful engine delivering a profound physics, animation and effect performance, as well as streaming video and sound.

This is just a tip of an iceberg. The first version of Unity was released in 2005 and since then over 15 notable games, released and in-development, were built with Unity, including Need For Speed World, My Animal Centre (first Wii game create using Unity), Gooball and others.

Although the engine enables to create games and interactive content that can run on Windows, the software itself is Mac only. It is rumored that the company is working on a PC version of the Unity engine, but in our opinion, such a comfortable and easy workflow Unity provides is worth spending some money and time on Mac, even if you are a devoted Windows fan.

Currently the huge Unity audience is excited about upcoming Unity 3 release. Apparently this is going to be a big-bang update, indeed. Among the main highlights announced so far are:

• Unified editor: allows you to build and preview your game for iPhone, xBox 360 and web inside the same editor.
• Source-level debugging: from now on you can pause your game, do line-by-line single stepping, set breakpoints, and inspect variables. Forget about print-based debugging.
• Project Browser: Unity 3 contains a content browser that shows everything with previews – including tagging and searching – so you always have the assets you need at your fingertips.

More improvements and innovation is expected to come with Unity 3, you can find out more at unity3d.com/.

No doubt, if you are at least slightly interested in creating 3D games, Unity is worth checking. By the way, they have a free version which is limited in features but more than enough for a trial. It’s hard to find an easier way to get 3D out there on the Web. [Don’t agree with this statement? Share your opinion in comments!]

A few days ago Adobe launched a new beta version of its Flash Player 10.1. Including several important improvements and bug fixes, Flash Player 10.1 Beta 3 is definitely a pleasant release both for flash devs and users.

Beta 3 release probably brought the biggest piece of cake to owners of netbooks (at least to those with the Intel GMA 500 and Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator graphics chipsets). As you might already know, the third beta provides better HD Web video streaming performance.

Early Web video tests conducted by numerous techi observers and enthusiasts, (Cnet test, Engadget test) show great results: both 720p and 1080p streaming videos play back quite smoothly. Of course, experts don’t hurry to call this an outright performance, but the progress is obvious and more is expected to come with the final release of Flash Player 10.1 later this year. If you still haven’t tried Beta 3 on your netbook, catch up and share your impressions in comments! One thing we’d like to caution you about is that you need to install updated drivers for the aforesaid chipsets before attempting playback after the player update.

Another long-awaited feature brought by Flash Player 10.1 Beta 3 is a microphone access. Back in Flash Player 10 Adobe Team added a feature called scripted audio playback, gave developers a possibility to write an AS code and then generate sound of that. In this version of Flash player they added the capability to do the same thing for audio recording, so you could write a script, capture an audio, process it and then output it. Basically, in order to record audio in AS you can now use right the same event you used for playback, just in reverse. The ability to manipulate the audio coming into the microphone/line input enables flash developers to create some really cool audio triggered applications.

The new 10.1 also introduces some clever innovation in the field of RTMFP protocol which now supports groups. The main benefit of this technology is that when you want to broadcast flash files to multiple viewers, FlashPlayer spreads the bandwidth load across different users.

The new version of Flash Player is a step towards mobile integration. It introduces new mobile-ready features that take advantage of native device capabilities, such as support for multi-touch, gestures, mobile text and accelerometer input. No doubt, currently Flash Player runs on devices with a number of limitations, but this is just a beginning and the very fact that it can run on rather limited mobile platforms is impressive.

The list of new features of Flash Player 10.1 is much longer, you can find the full list of improvements and download the third beta on Adobe Labs.