What is "RSS" and what does that funny symbol mean? RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication." The RSS Symbol on your website means that you are providing a way to publish content that other people can subscribe to. Think of it as a magazine publication, where you are the magazine publisher, and your subscribers can sign up for everything that you publish. In the case of RSS, your subscribers can immediately receive what you've published whether or not they're looking at your website. They can even choose to re-publish your RSS content on their own websites, thus allowing you to reach out to people beyond your immediate subscribers!
You can also use RSS to publish your podcasts. People with iPods or other MP3 devices can subscribe to and download your podcasts without having to browse to your site. This is immensely convenient because it allows you to broadcast like a radio station to all your subscribers. Contact the team at Ruysdael Design and learn how you can incorporate RSS on your site today!
SAMPLE: Lighthouse
Description: This Flash animation was inspired by a photograph of a lighthouse at sunset. Specifically, this is the Pigeon Point Lighthouse in Half Moon Bay, California. Though it's a good static photo, we thought it might look better with some added animation. If you look at the photo long enough, you'll see a rotating beacon in the lighthouse tower as well as some random lights shining through the windows of the surrounding homes.
Development Notes: The original photo was in "panorama" format and was cropped so that only the portion that pertained to the animation was manipulated in Adobe Flash. Adobe PhotoShop was used to create 13 stages of the beacon light. Each stage required a different layer. Similarly, each window light was simulated by placing white pixels at 5 different locations, one for each window. Each different window location was put on its own layer. When the artwork was complete, the layers were imported to Adobe Flash - each layer remained intact. Once within Flash, each layer was turned into a "MovieClip" and assigned an object name. ActionScript was used to create a timer that cycles each 50 milliseconds (20 cycles per second). On each second boundary, a window light is toggled based upon a 3 percent probability function. On each 10-second boundary, the beacon light is "rotated" by flipping through each of the 13 stages in rapid succession. Finally, the cropped portion of the animated photograph was "stitched" back into the original photograph so that the original panoramic view was preserved. (The stitched-in version can be seen at the target site.)
Development Time: About 4 hours to go from concept to finished and tested product.
Package This Flash animation was developed using the Ruysdael Design Advanced Services Package, charging a total of 4 hours of development time.
Where deployed: Currently, this animation is deployed at ureadit.