In order to retrieve any file from within any Flash (including motif) ad served by an external server, certain steps must be taken to meet the Flash Player’s security requirements. The web server that hosts the file being loaded into the ad must have a security document present at the root of the web server. You must create the file named “crossdomain.xml” to outline which domains are allowed to connect via Flash to that server, and place this file at the very root level of the web server. This was handy to learn because our clients couldn’t handle flash banners bigger than 40k without charging more. Here is a banner I created that loads another flash swf file into the main swf file. Click here for a detailed how-to on
loading external Flash SWFs into another hosted Flash SWF.

This document describes how to make a Flash ad click through to a URL defined in an HTML file. By defining the click-through in the HTML file, the site that is hosting the flash swf can change tracking information or
the click-through target of the ad quickly, without requiring edits to the Flash creative. The document assumes that the reader already knows how to make the Flash creative open a web page when clicked.

I was making a ‘Feliz Navidad’ banner at work and wanted to add snow to it to make it more eye catching. Here’s a link to a blog by Seb Lee-Delisle using Papervision to make 3D snow. Unfortinatley I couldn’t use AsctionScript 3.0 in our banners so I found a cool tutorial at Kirupa that uses ActionScript 2.0 in a similar snow effect that gives the user some fun with the mouse. This was a good choice because you can change the snow to whatever shape you want like snowflakes for instance. You could also tell it how much snow particles to fall at a time. I decided to keep the snow ball theme in the banner.