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Part II: An incredibly shallow explanation of the theft
I can't get into much detail here, because it's a bit complex in places, especially for the non-geeky readers. But I will tell you all how absurd it is to sell something like a flash app on the web. It's like putting out a bowl of candy on Halloween with a sign that says, "please take just one". Winklet Web Design shouldn't be surprised, then, when a few greedy trick-or-treaters end up emptying their proverbial bowl.
If there were an absurdity meter that could be purchased by the general public (I'm not saying they don't exist, but that they're only available to the elite few), it would register at least a 3 on the absurdity scale. What's that? Three seems low to you? Ah, I forgot to explain the meter. The absurdity meter is logarithmic (base 11 log, even -- it's ridiculous, it's not even funny). In other words, this concept, rating 3+, is at least 121 times more absurd than minor absurdities, which rate at 1.
Side note: minor absurdities are things like the old cliches of "Why does 7-11 have a lock on the door if it's always open?" and "Why do we park in the driveway and drive on a parkway?" -- incidentally, people who ask such questions actually rate higher than the questions they ask.
The major flaw is that everything that runs within a browser must be downloaded. If I write a server-side script, you see only the output (html) and not the script itself (php/perl/ruby/etc). This is because the script is run on my web server, and plain HTML is sent to your computer. Flash, on the other hand, is downloaded to your computer and run by your browser.
Back up for a bit. Bear with me here, but I've forgotten a piece of the puzzle and it's too much work to reformat the above text. Winklets are given out as free trials. You download the trial, set things up as you like, and if everything seems nice, you buy the real thing and copy your settings over. Stealing a winklet is easy enough without the trial, but requires some advanced stuff (discussed later if you're game). Plus that, having a trial gives you all the files you need to get started.
Okay, moving forward again, here's a summary of the theft process.
- Download trial
- Read instructions
- Set things up the way you like
- Download real version from somebody's website
- Rename the "trialtext.txt" file to the first part of the app's name (ie, "music003.txt" for "music003.swf" flash file
- Voila!
No, I won't go into more detail than that - if you understand how to do it, hopefully you're ethical enough not to. I'm not here to promote piracy; I'm here to explain the absurdity of the system. Also note that I haven't tested the process thoroughly yet - I know it works on the four of five templates I've tested out, but I don't know if that's how they all are.
How does one find a winklet-enabled website? It can be difficult if you don't know where to look. Hopefully whatever site you want to build has a community, and you're active in that community. In a worst-case scenario, you do a search on the web for your field (business, photography, musicians) and look for forums. Ask about winklets. See if anybody has one on their site. You'll eventually find one and you should be all set.
There is more to learn in the "Geeky Details" section, but only real geeks should go there. The principles of "dealing with" flash templates can be applied to people much bigger than Winklet Web Design, but in some cases you really need to dig deep.
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