Sprouts! ok I was bored and found a new program to play with

[Asellith]

I found this program called Sprouts some of you might have heard of it already. Anyway I build this

http://seed.sproutbuilder.com/PgC9y2wgA5Knhqwu

In like 5 mins. I will clean it up tomorrow and work on it some more but If anyone wants to distribute it once it looks a little cleaner they can. Just use the embedded code next to the SOR add and you can post it in your blog or on your website. Also the cool thing is if I update it on sprout which I am planning to do. Then your website updates automatically. Because it loads from sprouts website not your. Cool stuff.

Oh and the buttons work they actually link to SOR.

[superchiku]

can u exactly explain what this is??

[awally88]

Sprouts are interactive and portable chunks of web content. Some people call them widgets, mashups or mini-sites but we just call them sprouts.

[Asellith]

Basically you can embbed this in a blog or website or facebook/myspace whatever (except the forum for some reason it doesn't take HTML well) Then this little widget is usable by everyone. If I update the widget on the sprout website then every copy out there changes as well. I designed this one as a test its sorta a interactive ad right now. I want to flesh it out more and maybe get it to show random bot tutorials or forum posts.

[paulstreats]

isnt it just an interactive flash object? it only embeds the flash player and loads the url from a remote site, I would imagine that the user interface for building them is easier than flashmx though.

[Asellith]

Yah its just a flash object but the program is completely browser based and so easy to use. oh and free thats the important part

[Trumpkin]

Nice, I'll go ahead and put this on my website.

[Admin]

Asellith sent me an email on this earlier this morning, and I basically said I really really like it

Its a great way to help SoR grow too! Everyone is encouraged to put it on your site.

Asellith, can it do more? I mean, what if it has some neat 'ask a robot question' feature and it does a search or perhaps shows questions from the FAQ? What I'm getting at is, can we perhaps get it to be a useful tool beyond advertising?

[Asellith]

right now I am looking into making a big one that could be used as a entry page to SOR. I'll fiddle with the little one for a bit and see what cool things I can come up with. The "sprouts" on other peoples site will update automatically. I have already made one change. After 30 seconds the entire clip repeats from the beginning.

[dunk]

if people are planning on using flash based menus in their websites it is very important to also include conventional HTML links on the page as well if you want to remain search engine compatible.
notice that the Sprout homepage uses HTML for it's navigation. i would treat that as a sign....

personally i hate the idea of using anything as processor and bandwidth intensive as flash for something like navigation that is done perfectly well in HTML.
not every one is using modern hardware or a fast, reliable connection to browse the internet.


dunk.
(sat in a conference which is talking about internet connectivity in Africa and the Middle East at the moment...)

[Asellith]

Ok so the first trial run for the entry page test is done. This is a bigger version of the little one. It is 800 X 600 so should work with most peoples computers. If we do add it might be nice to have a link below to allow people with slower connections to skip the intro but thats up to admin here is the new link for those who want to take a look.


http://www.gigya.com/wildfire/WidgetPreview.aspx?ut=dBFII5RbVxUc8nBdc3bMDVzn3rR1coLOoBUUhRtwG-mPg7f60NbRA8MNofM_SEla7j8UEmKY0YyNN9BS8cLdUEWi3i5AniuSp4mJsp1KcB_Gtgg3BZufR04nqkBUzupit9-Qp9kbwhC1ZBG4bTEFs9UCy1KDQ1KduCw5NfN6E4hm4LMm4XV6gyiOpSH056M2g0HlSZx0wx4dm4Pza9WIBsPwc79jNFsRT0mIFSlWsixjcdidgMhnQuCWjz6eJvNxH5qcuCS8oNmT1voSvO-_ww..

Ok so they changed a bunch of stuff after I posted the first one. took me a bit to figure out how I stole the URL the last time It has some bugs like I can get it to support any cool events like mouse overs. Also I didn't want to pop all the youtube videos in at one time but if you click to start one before they all load it plays it in the background so thats anoying. I might cheat and force the audio levels of the loading pages to mute. Ideas? Thoughts? Also if anyone knows of a real live flash editor that I can use to make a real intro page with cooler features let me know.

[Admin]

(just got time to look at this)

whoa nice!

what if it can cycle through screens every few seconds that say something like:

what motor is good enough for your robot?
(link to tutorial here)
[image of robot with motor here, or maybe a video]

edit: Oh and it has to fit into a width of 500 pixels, height can be whatever.