Flash is a highly creative medium & ActionScript 3 is a powerful language.

On the other hand, it is mostly hard to speed up when working with Flash as AS3 can be quite time-consuming & there are things to do (planning & setup of Flash movies) before you can actually get anything done.

This is where HYPE comes in.

HYPE is a creative coding framework built on top of ActionScript 3 which aims to enable Flash developers of every level to creatively play & express themselves.

The framework is extendible as it is possible to write new classes & improve it.

There are lots of examples provided at the HYPE website which are worth checking out.

Photo Booth is a tiny open source Flash application that can capture images from a webcam.

The script is built with AS3 + PHP5 and can be instantly implemented to any website.

It can be a great add-on when asking users to upload an avatar or creating a web application around photos.

To see how it works, a demo can be found here.

In order to better understand this resource, let’s describe augmented reality first. From Wikipedia:

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality

EZFlar is an open source ActionScript library that enables you to create such a media. Or, you can use the online generator.

How it works?

It simply inserts a pre-defined media inside a "pre-defined object" in another media.

There is an online generator provided. You’ll need a webcam & a printer to test it instantly:

• Select the media to be integrated (image, video, sound, URL, etc.)
• Print a special shape provided
• Display the printed sheet while the application records you through your webcam
• It will insert the "selected media" to the place where you hold the sheet.

It may look complicated, however, you can check this video or this one to see it working.

HydraFramework is a prescriptive development framework for quickly building Flex applications at every level.

The framework’s development methodology can be totally adopted or the core classes can be used in any way you see fit in projects.

It consists several projects:

• HydraFramework Core – an implementation of MVC (otherwise known as HydraMVC)
• HydraPlugins – for quickly adding prebuilt functionality into the core
• HydraComponents – a library of components built on the HydraFramework.

The framework is well documented & presents a demo.

XML Banner Rotator is a free Flash component to display rotating images with style.

It is highly customizable via a XML file & comes with 35+ options including the masking size and speed.

The position of the elements on the screen, number of images & colors can all be controlled.

Besides any HTML page, XML Banner Rotator can be inserted into any FLA file too.

P.S. Download requires free membership.

This is a free Flash image viewer with a magnifying glass created by the talented team at Flabell.

It is activated once the user hovers the image which makes it very functional specially for e-commerce websites presenting products.

It is possible to customize various variables from XML or HTML:

• image path (image of any size)
• the display area size
• the lens size

P.S. Download requires free membership.

JC Play List is a free Flash list component for creating sliders from multimedia lists (for ex: .xml and RSS 2.0 feeds from Picasa and Flickr)

It is built with AS3 & can display any kind of lists including items that contain images, titles, descriptions, index numbers, additional information, custom backgrounds and overlays.

The component offers various navigation methods which can be used together or separately, like:

• navigation through previous/next buttons
• scroll bar and/or mouse movement
• horizontal/vertical layout

And, although it comes with a default skin, it is possible to create & implement new ones.

SilverX is a free software which aims to help Silverlight designers/developers for converting existing Flash content to Silverlight.

It supports most of the Flash’s basic features like: vector primitives, images, texts & animations.

SilverX can be used for other scenarios as many applications has "export to SWF features" which means they can be converted to Silverlight now (ex: exporting CorelDraw vector graphics to SWF file and then convert it to Silverlight XAML).

The software has clipping layers, sounds, buttons & filters/effects in the roadmap.

Flash Bookmarks is a free Flash component for integrating social bookmarking links to any website easily.

It supports the most popular sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Facebook, Google and Reddit.

The look & feel of the social bookmarking menu created with the component is totally customizable. It is possible to change:

• the icons to be displayed
• the size of the icons
• the aspect of the hint text for the icons
• details regarding the bookmarked data.

Flash Bookmarks can be both added by drag’n drops from the component panel of Flash or by code (AS3).

Wix is a free web-based service for creating simple to advanced Flash websites.

It offers 100s of ready-to-use and well-categorized free Flash templates (like e-flyers, photographers, business & more) or everything can be created from scratch with a blank one.

Wix is very easy to use with its drag’n drop editor that enables anyone to add:

• any type of media (sound, video, images)
• shapes, cliparts, animations, effects
• advanced photo albums (slideshows, coverflow, carousel & more)
• & lots of widgets like Google Maps, RSS, contact forms

to their websites.

If you want to sell stuff, the application has a solution for that too. It offers PayPal buttons to be added & configured with ease.

Although Wix looks like a perfect fit for anyone who is not into or new to web design (considering it does not require any programming skills), it is also a solution for experienced users to create impressive websites very quickly.

Websites created by this free web design service are search engine friendly & hosted free. For anyone looking into getting more with Wix, check the premium upgrades.

P.S. This post is a sponsored review.