Aflax is a library that enables developers to use JavaScript to fully utilize all of the features of Adobe’s Flash runtime including graphics, networking, video and camera support.

Flash JavaScript gateway that was released by Macromedia was only for Flash 7 or earlier and was a very low performance library as well. Aflax uses Flash 8’s new ExternalInterface which is much faster and more capable.

As a conclusion, using Aflax, you can create media players, animated charts, graphics & more with Flash without writing any ActionScript.

Few posts ago, we had mentioned SoundManager (WRD post link), a JavaScript API for controlling Flash sounds.

MooSound is a very similar API for MooTools (thanks to Ruslan for suggesting the resource).

MooSound’s poweful features let you reach almost every aspect of the flash sounds like:

• start, stop, pause
• ID3 information
• Filesize
• Loaded Bytes
• Duration
• Position
• Setting the volume
• Setting the pan
• Jump to feature

API is very well documented and a demo can be found at the homepage.

SoundManager is a Javascript Sound API which  effectively maps most of the native sound capabilities of Flash 8 to Javascript.

It enables you to control sound in a cross-browser/platform environment, using a language you already know.

A sample SoundManager code would be:

soundManager.createSound('myNewSound','/path/to/some.mp3');
soundManager.play('myNewSound');
soundManager.setVolume(’myNewSound’,50);

You see that it is really easy. This JavaScript Flash Sound API has other powerful controls like:

• stream
• autoplay
• onid3 - for ID3 tag displaying
• whileplaying
• and more..

Using SoundManager, you can easily create sound based web applications or more interactive background sounds for non-Flash websites.

AlivePDF is an open-source ActionScript 3 (Flash, Flex, AIR) PDF generation library. It allows you to generate PDF’s on the client-side.

You can use AlivePDF with Flash, Flex and Adobe AIR applications. Some sample codes can be found here.

There also few tutorials about using it with AIR and Flex here. 

Degrafa is a declarative graphics framework fo Flex which aims:

• Bringing the graphics classes up a level to provide a common ground between developer and designer within Flex
• Enabling the graphics classes to become first class citizens within the Flex framework.
• Minimizing the learning curve of Flex graphics development.

Degrafa allows you to use MXML markup to draw shapes, make complex graphics, create skins and also includes advanced CSS support.

Rather than ActionScript, MXML is easier to read an learn, specially for a designer’s point of view.

There are great samples of what can be done with Degrafa here.

MP3 Player is an open source flash MP3 player which can be customized and integrated into websites easily.

It has 5 different versions that lets you only use a "play button" or a player which lets users to choose tracks from multiple files. Here are the versions:

• mini
• normal
• maxi
• multi
• js

Gaia is a front-end Flash framework for AS2 and AS3 and is designed to dramatically reduce development time.

It provides solutions to the challenges and repeated tasks faced with front-end Flash site development, such as navigation, transitions, preloading, asset management, site structure and deep linking.

There is a nice screencast here.

Gaia’s unique event hijacking engine enables you to achieve some really complex behavior with very little code. Additionally, Gaia has scaffolding which generates all the base files for your site, including Flash files, class files, and even exclude.xml files!

It uses SWFObject and SWFAddress and also forces applications to support deep linking (great for SEO purposes).

If you’re developing Flash sites and want to speed up your Flash workflow with rapid development and don’t want to have to learn a complicated framework API, give Gaia a test drive.

Flash toolkit PowerCursor, an amazing idea, helps creating interfaces with the touch feeling. Users can experience touch feelings like roughness, volume, pressure, stickiness or mass in a graphical interface.

The software engine consists of a set of force field objects that can be added to any Flash project: holes, hills, slopes, roughs, walls, whirls, and more. 

How it works?

PowerCursor uses a technique called ‘optically simulated haptic feedback’ to evoke the tactile experience. It simply, using active cursor displacements, guides the user towards preferred positions or communicate properties of the interface to the user. Due to these cursor displacements a hole becomes an easily accessible part of the screen, whereas a bump area is hard to access.

Who can use PowerCursor?

Although skilled programmers might dive deeper into the toolkit’s API to control the PowerCursor objects on a code level, the toolkit can be used by non-programmers with basic Flash skills.

Tweening classes for Flash makes it easier & more stable to create animations based on real time rather than Flash frames.

Tweener is a class used to create tweenings and other transitions via ActionScript code for Flash.

The fluid syntax of Tweener allows it to be used to tween any numeric property of any object of any class, so it is not tied to specific properties of built-in classes such as MovieClips or TextFields.

Once included on SWF movies, Tweener currently takes 8.8kb (AS2 FL2), 9.2kb (AS2) or 10.4kb (AS3) of the total compiled file size. It can be compiled with the Flash IDE, MTASC, or Flex SDK (even with strict rules on).

It’s released and maintained for these versions:

• ActionScript 2.0, for Flash 7+ and Flash Lite 2.0+
• ActionScript 2.0, for Flash 8+
• ActionSctipt 3.0, for Flash 9+

SimpleViewer is a free, customizable Flash image gallery. This flash gallery is only 17kb and can be customized easily to suit your needs.

Customization options from the xml file of the gallery are found here.

Features:

- Intelligent image pre-loading.
- Intuitive image navigation
- Lightweight (17k).
- Customizable interface - Set text color, frame color and width, navigation position.
- Resizable interface - Interface scales to fit browser window.
- Cross platform - Windows/Macintosh/Linux (requires Flash 7 or higher).
- Flash 7 detection. Users without Flash 7 are messaged to upgrade Flash.
- International font support.
- Keyboard Navigation (Cursor keys, Home, End, Page Up/Down)
- Mousewheel navigation
- Optionally right-click to open image in a new window.
- Free!
- flickr support (see bottom)

There is a simple to use enhancement to SimpleViewer which displays a selected flickr photo set from flickr called FlickrViewer.