If you create a hyperlink to a media file that can be opened within the browser such as an mp3, mpg, jpg, pdf, etc. a single left click will open the file in the web browser instead of triggering a download. To download the file you need to right click (CTRL + click for mac) and choose 'Save File As...' from the dropdown.

If your intention is to create a link for the user to download the file rather than viewing it in their browser you can do so using a simple php script. Create a file called 'download.php' and copy in the following php:

<?php
$download_file = $_GET['file'];
$download_file_name = $_GET['name'];
$handle = fopen($download_file, "r");
header('Content-Description: File Transfer');
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.$download_file_name);
header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
header('Pragma: public');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($download_file));
ob_clean();
flush();
readfile($download_file);
fclose($handle);
exit;
?>

You can then create your download links like so:

www.example.com/download.php?file=images/example.jpg&name=hello.jpg

The URL should include the path to the file to be downloaded, and the name you want to give the file. In the above example the file is 'images/example.jpg' but the name of the file downloaded by the user would be 'hello.jpg'

When using PHP headers it is important to note that the headers will only be executed if they are called before any text is output to the page. Any html, or php echo tags, before the headers will cause the headers to be ignored. A line break or space before the opening php tag will also prevent headers from working.

INSPIRATION

A long time ago I remember being inspired by the Dub Selector project at Infinite Wheel, a series of Flash movies that play heavy dub reggae loops, and incorporate various ways of triggering a selection of dub sound effects, drum rolls and keyboard notes. The project gave me the idea to create a more in-depth Flash music production tool, with many preset sounds and loops, and potentially audio sequencing tools too.

MY PREVIOUS EXPERIMENTS WITH FLASH AND SOUND

This was back in the days of Flash 5 and I was a novice with Flash, I had only a basic grasp of actionscript. My first experiment was called ATG Beatbox. Here it is in all it's lo-fi glory!

Pretty basic,  but quite fun to play with too! The main problem I had was getting the samples to loop properly, and to get 2 or more samples to play in sync with each other. These restrictions made the possibility of sequencing very limited, so I ended up creating it so that the user could trigger the samples manually and had to time it right to get the 2 beats in sync.

The only way I could get the samples to loop cleanly was by importing them into the fla and attaching them to keyframes in the timeline.

I later made a few other experiments, such as a piano arpeggiator which used actionscript to play different arpeggio patterns. The timing was always an issue, and I concluded that Flash makes a lousy metronome! Unfortunately I seem to have lost the source files for this project so I can't provide an example.

Other more recent Flash projects I have done which include an element of sound are the SoundFX Player and Artanoid Game for 76 Creative. Artanoid uses the as2 attachSound method to load the mp3 files dynamically from the server.

SOUND VISUALISATION

New to actionscript 3 is the SoundMixer.computeSpectrum method, which takes a snapshot of the current sound wave and places it into the specified ByteArray object. The values are formatted as normalized floating-point values, in the range -1.0 to 1.0. The ByteArray object passed to the outputArray parameter is overwritten with the new values. The size of the ByteArray object created is fixed to 512 floating-point values, where the first 256 values represent the left audio channel, and the second 256 values represent the right audio channel.

It is explained in more depth in the article Sound Visualization in Flash CS3 by Tom Green, which is where I found out about it in the first place.

This is something I'm still experimenting with, but here's a basic example of what it can do:

Notice that because the audio sample is being loaded from the server using the Sound.load() method, the looping of the sample is still not satisfactory. The only way to make a sample loop properly still seems to be to import it and attach it to a keyframe. Here's another more abstract example:

There are a lot more cool examples of this type of Sound Visualisation at the AS3 Sound Spectrum Contest Results Be sure to check out the winning entry, which really demonstrates the scope of what can be done using computeSpectrum.

NEW SOUND API FOR FLASH 10

I recently discovered the Hobnox AudioTool, which is exactly the type of Flash based audio tool I imagined. It's actually amazing! As it features effects, like distortion, delay & reverb, phaser, etc. I could tell that, although the interface was flash, something else was being used to process the audio. The other thing I noticed was that the timing of it's drum machines was perfect! Something I've never been able to achieve with Flash.

Further investigation of the new sound API led me to these three articles by Adobe Engineer Tinic Uro, which seem to be a direct response to the Adobe, Make Some Noise campaign:

• Adobe Is Making Some Noise Part 1
• Adobe Is Making Some Noise Part 2
• Adobe Is Making Some Noise Part 3

In Part 3 of the article he provides some code for a 'seamless loop' using the new extract() method with the samplesCallback event handler. I will put this code to the test as I am sure it will lead to new projects and experiments for me, the results of which will surely appear on my site in the near future!

Other Flash projects that utilise the new sound API are Tenoran, a sampling and basic sequencing instrument, and Noteflight, a a full-featured application that displays, edits, prints and plays back music notation.

Admin76 is a powerful and versatile web content management system (CMS) designed and developed by 76 Creative. It is a PHP / mySQL driven project, for which I developed it's coding framework.

The main difference between Admin76 and other commercial CMS's is it's potential to be tailored exactly to the website it is powering. It can be transformed into a very 'bespoke' system, and so can be used to power many different genres of website, from a simple 5 page website, to a large news site, image or video gallery or a recruitment site. The only controls available in the CMS will be the exact controls you need to manage your site, nothing more, nothing less!

Other CMS's have certain 'tendencies' which relate to their intended user-base. For instance, WordPress is very much associated with blogging, Drupal is associated with community-driven sites. This is reflected in the possible themes, plugins and addons available for each.

Admin76 on the other hand is more flexible in this respect.  It can power a site with static pages, and news with categories and date based archives in the same way that WordPress can, but it can also power all sorts of different types of lists, with as many custom fields as you wish, e.g. address lists, list of file downloads, event diary, mp3 playlists, video playlists, etc. It can even be made to output XML, so it can be used to fully manage Flash Sites too.

As Admin76 is currently only available to customers of 76 Creative it has no 3rd party features, like plugins etc., available. This, however, is another strength of the system. All of Admin76's features are built in. It has an advanced image gallery system, with multiple file upload, medium size and thumbnail image creation.

Other standard features include RSS Feeds, Multiple Authors / Administrators, Flash Slideshow System, Flash Video Gallery System.

For more info about Admin76, and to enquire about getting your own self-managed, elegantly designed website get in touch with 76 Creative.

Some of the mySQL and PHP functions I have utilised in Admin76 will soon be available as tutorials on my site.

Heathcote Bailey is a creatively led events services company specialising in bespoke party production. The site is built in a combination of PHP, JavaScript and HTML. It features a large scrolling background image which is very cool.

Check it out: www.heathcotebailey.co.uk

Something I've noticed recently, whilst installing many different WordPress plugins on my site and on other sites is the inconsistency in JavaScript popup window code used in many plugins, allowing for the same popup to be opened numerous times or for a popup to hide in the background behind another page. The basic code to open a popup is:

window.open('http://bla.com','myWindow','status = 1, height = 300, width = 300,
resizable = 0');

However, if you add this code as the onclick for a button or anchor tag it will open a new popup each time it is clicked regardless of the fact that the window may already be open. Adding return false; will prevent this from happening, but then if the window is at the bottom of the pile clicking on the link will do nothing.

To ensure the window is brought to the front the code should be executed like this:

myPopup = window.open('http://bla.com','myWindow','status = 1, height = 300,
width = 300, resizable = 0'); myPopup.focus(); return false;