I just posted 2 new demo videos on the Konductor blog.
I will go into a little more detail about exactly what is behind each of these functions, and what that does for you.
Image Optimzation
The problem: In order to upload a very large image for display on a website, a user will typically have to resize the image using appropriate software. This assumes that your users have a certain level of technical knowledge. Most often, though, we have found that users simply upload the image as is, thinking that the image size will automatically be reduced if the image is scaled down. This usually has a pretty bad effect on the upload time for them, download times for their users, and definitely on their traffic bill…
In AIR we can resize the image on the client side, and then upload the much smaller image afterwards. We have local file access permissions, and access to all of Flex/AIR’s bitmap manipulation functionality, which allows us to read files right from the file system, apply smooth bicubic smoothing to resized images, and apply custom levels of jpeg compression to keep file sizes down and retain acceptable quality.
What that means: it may seem simple to me and you, but not having to manually resize images makes this functionality far more accessible to users who don’t know how to resize images themselves, or who even don’t know the implications of not doing so. Plus it has a very positive effect on their monthly traffic quotas.
Below is a demo of how we have implemented that:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=67rAadGk8Vw&feature=hd
Bear in mind that we actually be allowing you to adjust the dimensions of the image to be uploaded, and set the level of compression.
Form Builder
A big complains many users had reagrding CMS in the past was the difficulty in creating forms themselves. This is an issue we have started to address. I still think that a typical user with little technical knowledge might find our current implementation a little daunting, but I think it is a great step in the right direction, and we have some good ideas on how to improve it.
Here it is below:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=lYhMlaGR26s&feature=hd
Let me know what you think, good or bad…
Tags: air, cms, demonstration, tutorial, video