OT: Interesting use of Flash overlay

riredale wrote on 10/3/2006, 8:32 AM
I happened upon this site today, and to my surprise a woman popped up in the lower-left corner of the browser, touting the virtues of using "Eddie Z" for all my window blind needs. It's a Flash overlay, complete with transparent drop shadow, and although I find such ads a bit offensive, technically it looked pretty cool.

EDIT:
Apparently the ad was done by an outfit called "Rovion," which shows lots of other examples here.

Comments

Jay Gladwell wrote on 10/3/2006, 9:38 AM

Yes, and those things are as annoying as all get out! I'm trying to read and this stupid (fill in the blank) pops up and gets in the way.

Very annoying!


vitalforce wrote on 10/3/2006, 2:34 PM
She's purty.

Many interesting applications though...Commentary on political speeches, etc...
p@mast3rs wrote on 10/3/2006, 3:08 PM
I would love to see one of these pop up during one of those Bush speeches interpreting all the dribble that man spews.
Jonathan Neal wrote on 10/3/2006, 3:29 PM
Allow me to add my 15 degree OT spin by saying that dribble reminds me of basketball, so when you think he'll be talking to us in those ads?
[r]Evolution wrote on 10/3/2006, 6:56 PM
www.Overweb3d.com is another big one for doing these.

Thanks to Flash 8 & the On2VP6 codec introducing Alpha Channels I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of these.

We do a lot of Flash Banners and such... but none that are Annoying Pop-Ups that appear at will. Ours are built in as part of your site.

Check us out... www.Vision2Media.com

Jim H wrote on 10/3/2006, 7:26 PM
I can see a use for this on a website that's just for fun...though as soon as I started to scroll the window the little people dropped into the background somewhere and the audio kept going...that's annoying. Maybe these guys are not browser tab tolerant.
grh wrote on 10/4/2006, 5:17 AM
The effect is accomlished by the flash player grabbing a rectangular window (in this case in the lower left corner of the screen) and overlaying the woman/shadow and re-displaying. If you use your mouse you can ascertain the extent of the flash player by noticing when the mouse switches to a pointing hand (for the click-through). I'm guessing the media is a flash video with an alpha channel that only has to be composited onto a copy of the window background. Certainly, layers or divs are used here to create the overlay.

Every time you scroll, the flash player simly resets itself anew into the corner. Very well done, IMO.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 10/4/2006, 8:30 AM
these are the most annoying types of adds, ever. Right up there with putting flash video in banner/side adds.

people who invented this should be shot & drowned in a septic tank. >:(