Using Content Management to Manage Flash Applications
Justin Klingmanin CMS
One of the most interesting and rewarding aspects about my job here at Beacon Technologies is the fact that we are constantly looking for ways to integrate technologies together. As a CMS Specialist, I’m always looking for ways to use our Content Management System, Hannon Hill’s Cascade Server, to further allow our customers to manage their sites on their own…completely on their own.
We all know about Flash: a widely-used, extremely popular Web technology that allows site owners to jazz up their site with quick-loading animation. But how would a site owner even think about maintaining that Flash application? Have you ever seen the code that Flash is written in? It’s complicated to say the least. So we needed a way to allow our customers to have Flash applications on their site, but also allow them an easy way to maintain their images and content.
Enter Cascade Server. With our innovative solution, customers can use Cascade’s Microsoft Word-based editor and intuitive interface to edit content and images within a Flash player that Beacon custom-built for them. Since Cascade Server is based on XML, and Flash is a pro at reading XML files, you have your integration of technologies. Cascade Server can take the content that you put into it, publish it out in XML-format, and the Flash application reads that XML and displays the changes.
We took this solution even further, and built an all-Flash site. Instead of an HTML-based site calling a few Flash applications here and there, this site is completely built with Flash, and managed by Cascade. Using Cascade, our customer can add, remove, and delete pages, edit content using the Word-based editor, and insert images and tables.
It’s just another way that we create innovative Web technologies for our customers. To learn more, visit our Web site at http://www.beacontechnologies.com/.
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Tags: cascade server, CMS, flash
July 17th, 2008 at 11:54 am
That is very cool about building the all Flash site. As the Product Coordinator at Hannon Hill, I often talk to our clients about what they are doing with Cascade. Cascade is extremely flexible so there is definitely a lot of variety.
I love hearing about the more innovative things people do with Cascade because some people don’t really push it as far as it can go. This is a great example of a site that is doing something very cutting-edge with Cascade. Keep up the good work!
July 18th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Thanks Chris! We always enjoy encouragement from Hannon Hill. We always look for ways to tailor Cascade Server to a customer’s individual needs, and this is just one of many. When we empower a customer to keep their site up-to-date, whether it’s press releases, rotating impact images on their homepage, or Flash components, it’s very rewarding from a developer standpoint. I’m looking forward to seeing you in September at the annual user’s conference!