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FrameLabelMovieClip & UIFrameLabelMovieClip

Monday, April 13th, 2009

FrameLabelMovieClip and UIFlameLabelMovieClip (Flex), dispatch FrameLabelEvent’s when their playhead encounters a frame label. The FrameLabelEvent contains the FrameLabel object containing the name and frame number of the frame label.

Examples

FrameLabelMovieClipExampleLoadSWF – an example of loading an SWF with our library class and creating an instance of a FrameLabelMovieClip exported from the library.
UIFrameLabelMovieClipExampleSWC – an example of using a SWC in a Flex project that contains a UIFrameLabelMovieClip.

The classes themselves can be downloaded from our Google code library.

Classes

ws.tink.display.FrameLabelMovieClip
ws.tink.events.FrameLabelEvent
ws.tink.flex.flash.UIFrameLabelMovieClip

To enable ease in the Flash IDE I’ve also knocked up an extension that installs 2 utility commands for creating FrameLabelMovieClip’s and UIFrameLabelMovieClip’s. The extension also includes 2 class library components that contain the classes required by FrameLabelMovieClip (FrameLabelMovieClipBase) and UIFrameLabelMovieClip (TinkFlexComponentBase).

Commands

1. Convert Symbol to FrameLabelMovieClip
Creates FrameLabelMovieClip’s for use with Flash IDE and ActionScript 3.0 Projects, out of all the selected MovieClip’s in the library. The command also adds the FrameLabelMovieClipBase component to the library that contains the nessessary classes to compile a SWF or SWC.

2. Convert Symbol to Flex UIFrameLabelMovieClip
Creates UIFrameLabelMovieClip’s for use with the Flex framework out of all the selected MovieClip’s in the library. The command also adds the TinkFlexComponentBase component to the library that conatins the necessary classes to compile a SWF or SWC.

Components

1. FrameLabelMovieClipBase
Contains the necessary classes to use a FrameLabelMovieClip as a base class for a library symbol.

2. TinkFlexComponentBase
Contains the necessary classes to use a UIFrameLabelMovieClip as a base class for a library symbol.

MXI

FrameLabelMovieClip Creator

Posted in ActionScript 3.0, Development, Extensions, Flash 9, Flash CS4, Flex 3.0 | 5 Comments »

SuperTileList – Flash CS3

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

Here’s another of our additional components we used in a recent project and presented at LFPUG.

It adds the following styles to TileList.

verticalGap – the vertical spacing between item renderers.
horizontalGap – the horizontal spacing between item renderers.
scrollBarScale – the vertical scale of the VScrollBar if shown, and horizontal scale of the HScrollBar is shown.
easing – the easing applied to the item renderers position.
rendererDiration – the direction the item renderers are layed out. Can be horizontal or vertical.

Here’s an example of the component in action (right click for source).

You can get the component source from out Google Code.

Posted in Flash 9, Flash Player 9 | 5 Comments »

Additional Flash CS3 Components

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

In a recent project we required some additional functionality to the default components that come with Flash CS3. Here’s examples for some of them which we have added to our Google Code Library.

ArrowlessScrollBar
AutoSizeButtonExample
TweeningComboBoxExample

Posted in Flash 9, Flash Player 9 | 9 Comments »

Seamless Animated Skins in Flex

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

In Joey Lotts session on styling Flex at FOTB (where he did a great job), one of the attendees asked about animated skins.

There’s obviously many ways to approach this but I thought I’d do an example of how you can have seamless transitions between these states using frame labels inside the symbol in Flash, and by adding code using addFrameScript().

AnimatedSkinExample (right click for source)

GingerbreadMan skins are going to be all the rage in Flex 3.0 .

The animation for this skin was found on Flashkit.

Posted in Flash 9, Flex 3.0 | 11 Comments »

Adobe Image Foundation

Sunday, October 7th, 2007

By now you must have heard about the Adobe Image Foundation code-named Hydra, and as usually with anything new in the Flash Player Tinic has a nice informative post.

Hydra is a programming language used to implement image processing algorithms in a hardware-independent manner.

Joa already has a load of examples here, here and here and Mario also has a few examples up here and here.

You can download the AIF toolkit here and Kevin Goldsmith’s blog is worth keeping an eye on as well as Tinic’s for more info.

Posted in Flash 8, Flash 9 | No Comments »

H.264 Video for Flash

Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

This is a massive step in the right direction. I remember some time back when the On2 codec was introduced people were asking about H.264 and it the responsed was that is was too CPU intensive, which I guess now must have been resolved.

You will soon (with the release of Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 2 be able load and play .mp4,.m4v,.m4a,.mov and .3gp without any chances to your code.

Adobe official announcement here and there’s also some invaluable info going into the details of the implementation over at Tinics blog here.

The update als0 includes:
1. Enhancements to full-screen mode to use hardware scaling for improved video performance and quality on systems running Windows 2000 and newer or Mac OS X 10.2 and newer.
2. Faster rendering of vector graphics on multi-core CPUs.
3. Higher quality and performance for downscaling large bitmaps (SWF 9 only).
4. Support for caching common platform components, such as the Flex framework, to reduce average application sizes. This feature is enabled in the Flex 3 beta available on Adobe Labs.
5. Support for full-screen mode on Linux.

Wanna test it out? Well you can as the player is available on labs here.

Posted in Flash 9 | 4 Comments »

Create Classes Command & Panel

Monday, June 4th, 2007

If your developing anything in Flash on a decent scale you should get out of the Flash IDE. If you working with Flash 9 and ActionScript 3.0 I would recommend Flex Builder, at £370 (or $499 if you have a friend in the states), its well worth it’s money.

That said, the two products don’t integrate seemlessly which is the reason for this post. Everything you want to export from your Flash library now has to linked to a class, and if you don’t have a class file saved locally with the same name (i.e. you don’t need to add any extra functionlity to the class) then Flash with ‘auto-generate’ the class for you. This doesn’t mean that Flash actually creates the class locally, but it auto-generates the class when you export the movie.

This sounds a great idea and works well until you switch back to Flex Builder and try to use the auto-genetared class. Because their is no local copy of the class Flex Builder is unable to find it and therefore shows errors where the class is used. If you switch back to Flash to export the same script will work fine as Flash knows about the class. One of the biggest advantages of developing in Flex Builder is that fact that you are show errors without having to export your application, but if the problems panel is littered with problems which aren’t actually problems it removes the usefullness of this feature.

To solve this here’s a little JSFL command and panel that runs through your library and creates a local copy of any classes/packages in the library that it can’t find a local copy of, in a classpath you have specified. This means that when you switch back to Flex Builder it can find a local copy and doesn’t show the errors where these classes are used. The class generated looks like the following example… (more…)

Posted in Extensions, Flash 9 | 20 Comments »

Creative Suite 3 Trials

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

A couple of people have told me these are harder to find than usual.

Creative Suite 3 Trials, Flash CS3 Professional.

Posted in Flash 9 | 1 Comment »

FWiidom

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Good friend Adam has been playing with the Wiimote and Flash on Windows for a while now. About two weeks ago he was round mine showing me the classes he had put togther to enable Flash to interact fully with the Wiimote and he knocked up this first demo of intergrating what he had with Papervision3D.

He now has a site up dedicated to Flash and Wiimote intergration over at http://www.fwiidom.org/ (check the John Grdn inspired StarWiis).

I believe Pete Hobson who has an OSX version up and running named Fii is now working with Adam to provide a cross platform solution.

All this stuff looks very promising!

Posted in ActionScript, ActionScript 3.0, Flash 8, Flash 9 | 4 Comments »

FlashInterface

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

Want to start writing AS 3.0 or use Flex 2.0, but need to use them alongside older elements created in AS 2.0 and published for Flash Player 8 or lower? You could use LocalConnection or ExternalInterface, both having their own limitations, or you could take a look at FlashInterface.

FlashInterface allows direct communication between AVMs with a common API for both AS 2.0 and AS 3.0. It also supports controlling Flash Player 7 and lower SFW’s through a Flash 8 wrapper.

Features
Bi-direction communication between AVMs, Synchronous calls, Returns values from within same call, Common API, Call Local Properties, Call Local Methods, Anonymous Calls, Global Access to SWF elements, Optional Event Listener Model, No limitation on data size.

Download, documentation, tutorials and examples.

Posted in ActionScript, ActionScript 3.0, Flash 8, Flash 9, Flex 2.0 | No Comments »