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PHP & XML Flash Drawing Guestbook

This flash guestbook allows your visitors to not only leave comments, but also draw a picture or scribble a note. Uses php and xml to store user's drawings and messages. No database is required. When browsing the entries, the images are redrawn right before the viewer's eyes, exactly as they were created. Click "Add your entry" button above and give it a try.

Features

Nifty and Flexible - Watch the entries redrawn as they were created, or uncheck "redraw" option and skip to the final drawing.

No Flash Software Required - Comes complete with a published flash move, ready to create your flash guestbook.

Feature Rich Drawing - Change brush sizes, colors and opacity to create intricate drawings.

Unlimited Undo's - Erase one line at a time using the undo button.

Easy To Set Up - No xml knowledge or flash knowledge required.

No Database Required - Entries are stored as separate xml documents in a designated directory.

Customize all visual elements - Comes with guestbook.fla, which has all the visual elements used in the guestbook. Allows you to change the look and feel to your liking.

Set drawing size limitations - You decide how big a drawing your users can leave. Current entry size is displayed in kilobytes for users to keep track, and a warning message appears once the limit has been reached.

Flash Guestbook Setup

Your download includes everything you need to create a stand-alone flash guestbook or a guestbook to add to your html pages. You do not need the Flash Authoring application.

Step1 - Upload all included files

After unzipping the files, upload all contents of the folder to a directory on the server.

Step 2 - Set Permissions to Data Folder

In your ftp program right click or (control click on mac) on the "data" folder and select "set permissions" or if that's not available, "get info". It will depend on your ftp program. Fetch looks like the image to the left. Set permissions to 777. This will allow php to write new entries to the folder. That's it. You should not be able to load guestbook.php in your browser and add entries.

Customizing Your Guestbook

Your download comes with everything you need to create a custom looking guestbook to add to your project.

Setting Entry Size Limit

The default size limit for entries is 100K. If you feel that is a bit restrictive, you can set your own limit. The easiest way to do that is to open guestbook.html and find the following like of code:
so.addVariable("maxDrawingSize", "100")
And change the 100 to whatever you want it to be.

If you are using the guestbook within another flash project, you will want to modify the maxDrawingSize parameter of the component.

Changing the way the guestbook looks

To change the way the guestbook looks, you will need to have flash authoring software. If you don't have it, you can download a fully functional 30 day free trial from the Adobe site.

Open guestbook.fla and open the library. There you will find all the elements that are used in the guestbook. You can modify these to your liking, just don't change the names of any elements, as that may stop the guestbook from functioning.

If you are using the guestbook in another flash movie, you will need to transfer the guestbook assets folder into your project in addition to the guestbook component.

Using Guestbook outside of file structure.

By default, the guestbook will look in the same directory for all the necessary files. If you want to use the guesbook ouside the guestbook folder, you will need to let the guestbook know where all the relevant files are. To do so, pass the datapath variable to the swf with the path to the main guestbook folder.

Example:

var so = new SWFObject("nifties/guestbook.swf", "gallery", "100%", "100%", "6", "#FFFFFF");
so.addVariable("datapath", "nifties/guestbook/")
so.write("flashcontent");

In the above example, the page that houses the guestbook is in the root directory. There is a folder in the root called nifties, within that there is a folder called guestbook. Notice the trailing slash "/", that has to be there. datapath is also a parameter of the component, so it can be changed within flash as well.

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