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- December 19, 2008
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Flashloaded components review
As a flash developer, I’ve always been looking for time saving components.
Since two years, I’ve been a flashloaded customers. Currently, I’m happy with *none* of their components. To make a long story short; they’re pricy, buggy to the point of being useless and the only support is “will be corrected soon” with no updates in months.
Here is the round up.
PhotoFlow AS3
In the latest version 1.1.4, the loadXML function doesn’t work. What’s the point of using a XML if you cannot load it? Besides, the event are poorly handled, for instance the CLICK_SELECTED is fired twice. In one sentence: this component is unusable if you plan to control it via action script.
PageFlipperAS3
This one has a small bug that makes it crash when you want to embed it. I was looking for an AS3 flipping book *because” I needed to embed it. If not, I would have stucked to the great AS2 one already on the market. Unusable as well.
3DWallPro and 3DSpiral
They seem to work fine for the most part. Yet, they both have a great disavantage; you have to specify the image size (width and height) in the XML. Very, very tedious. Now on a more end user centric subject; if the 3D wall proves to be sexy, the spiral (and more recently the tunnel) give poor user experience.
Support
Usually, you have an answer within 1-3 business day, which is great. The answers are also useful.
Updates
Since August 2008, there have been *zero* updates on the components listed above. For the one being buggy, it’s a shame. For the price, I would have expected more updates.
Conclusion
I’m using now the components of afcomponents. There are better documented and have zero bug that I could find.
Matthew Scheuerman
December 31, 2008 at 10:47 am /Myriam,
Thanks so much for this review. I’ve been working with the photoflow and the 3dWallPro components at work and have come across the exact same problems. Thanks for the link to afcomponents. We’ll be using them in the future.
tcarter
May 9, 2009 at 7:55 am /man, i wish i had read this article first
i just purchased the photoFlow component, and sure enough, when i try to load the xml via the loadXML() function, it doesn’t work; if i enter the url directly in the components inspector, it’s fine
but, like you said, what’s the point if i can’t do it via actionscript….
i think i just blew $60
and yes, the support turnaround is way too slow
thanks for this posting
Joel
January 13, 2010 at 8:32 pm /I just came across this post and understand what you’re saying. It’s important for us to hear all feedback from our customers (good & bad), as we always strive to deliver the best customer experience and highest quality components.
We recently made changes to our development structure and support team. We have released updates to photoFlow-AS3 (which fixes the loadXML bug) and have updated pageFlipper-AS3 to work in clips that are attached dynamically to the stage.
Continued in next comment…
Joel
January 13, 2010 at 8:32 pm /3DWall must have the image size defined, because the thumbs need to know their zoom size for the large image which can’t be detected automatically.
With our new structure, we can fixing bugs in minimal time after they have been reported.
Support queries are answered within 1 business day & we now even try answer within a few hours.
If you ever have a problem with support or service, please email us through the contact page of our website & we will take care of it urgently.
Thank you.
Joel