Archive for November, 2008

There are currently two tools available which generate sIFR 3 movies for you, meaning you don’t have to use the Flash IDE to export them yourself. First there’s sIFR Generator, run by Richard Odekerken, which lets you upload a TTF file which is then turned into a sIFR movie. sIFR Generator currently generates movies compatible with r419, so it’s not useful if you want to use the latest sIFR 3 release. Which, of course, you should.

Update, November 25th: sIFR Generator now supports r436.

Also of importance are the legal issues surrounding the uploading of TTF files to a third-party server. Richard writes:

This is a Software-as-a-Service tool. Using this software requires you to upload font files to our website. By uploading the fonts you grant us permission to use the font, on your behalf, to create a sIFR SWF file that contains the font, and make it available to you.

All intellectual property rights and copyrights that apply to the original font, also apply to the generated font file. This file is made available only to the party who uploaded the font file.

We do keep fonts uploaded to sIFRGenerator.com for debug and statistical purposes.

Also available is sIFR Font Maker by CoffeeCup Software. This is a free, open source tool that runs under Windows. It too generates r419-compatible movies, but unlike sIFR Generator there is no notice of this fact. This, along with the lack of direct links to sIFR 3 pages is something CoffeeCup should fix. That said, it does run locally, so that’s a plus over sIFR Generator in terms of uploading TTF files.

I’ve seen a few reports of links not working properly in movies created via sIFR Generator. It wouldn’t surprise me if this issue is present in sIFR Font Maker as well, since they’re quite likely to use the same underlying software. But, if you need to create a font file, and don’t have access to the Flash IDE, and are okay with using r419, these tools are for you.