Fallbacks are a thing that just has to be made in the banner world. Typically when a banner SWF can’t be shown, an alternate fallback JPEG is shown. The process of making a fallback, is as follows: Open swf > screen grab > crop to size in photoshop > save as web > rename to include “fallback” in the file name > output.

Simple, but as an Interactive Designer, I saw this, and thought:

“Surely I can speed this up, maybe I could make an AIR app to do this”.

So I give you Fallback Creator. Simply drag your banner SWF into the window, capture, and it will output a JPEG named “myBannerName_fallback.jpg”, back to the same directory as the SWF

Additionally, it will tell you the Actionscript version of the file, the Flash player version, width, height, and fps. All information that could become valuable to a Project Manager.

So, now anyone without photoshop, can make a fallback, and know the properties of the SWF.

I estimate that this tool at least half’s the time needed to make a fallback, and hopefully gives designers and programmers more time to make cool stuff!