Flashcraving

Using Lightbox++ on a Flash button

flashcraving — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:42:05 +0000

Level: Intermediate Languages: AS 2.0, JavaScript

In this tutorial, I will show you how to launch a Lightbox window from within a flash movie.

Step 1:
You need to install Lightbox++ on you server for it to work.
Click on the Lightbox++ link for instructions
Then paste the following code between the tag of your html page holding your swf.

Step 2:
In the Flash movie, you need to use the getURL method on a button to call the images. You can create your button dynamically or using the Flash IDE.
Your ActionScript should look like this:

my_btn.onRelease = function(){
getURL(“javascript:LightboxDelegate(‘image1.jpg’, ‘caption’)”);
}

Embed your flash movie or publish the html file using the Flash publish settings.

Step 3:
After publishing your html page,
Within the tags, specify the following parameters to your flash movie:

You also need to add the following attribute to your tag: wmode=”transparent”
Make sure you have edited the location of all you script and images for lightbox++.
This is important for the lightbox.css file to be linked properly as well as the images for it to work.
Then all you have to do is upload it to your server.

Download my example here.

Loading a flash movie using the MovieClipLoader Class

flashcraving — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 10:29:08 +0000

Level: Intermediate, Language: AS 2.0

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to use the MovieClipLoader Class to load a Flash movie into another Flash movie. This is a very useful Class and you can use it to load jpg, gif and png files as well

Download the example source files here.

I created two Flash movies for this example. The one named main.swf will be the main flash movie that you will embed in a website. The other movie called content.swf will be loaded into main.swf.
In main.swf, you need to create a button, give it an instance name loader_btn.

Open the action panel and enter the following code on the first frame:

//create an instance of the MovieClipLoader Class

var clipLoader:MovieClipLoader = new MovieClipLoader();

//create a container and set it’s depth.

this.createEmptyMovieClip(“MyContainer_mc”,_root.getNextHighestDepth());

loader_btn.onRelease = function() {

clipLoader.loadClip(“content.swf”, MyContainer_mc);

}

Tip: You can create a function to unload the content.swf clip

Add to the first frame the following code

function unLoadingClips() {
clipLoader.unloadClip(_root.getNextHighestDepth());
}

You can now call the function on a particular frame or button of your main.swf movie:

unLoadingClips();

One of the advantage in using the MovieClipLoader Class is the ability to add a listener to your MovieClipLoader. That way you can add a preloader and listen to the loading start, the progress and when the Flash movie is fully loaded. Following is an example:

var clipLoader:MovieClipLoader = new MovieClipLoader();
this.createEmptyMovieClip(“MyContainer_mc”,_root.getNextHighestDepth());
loader_btn.onRelease = function() {
clipLoader.loadClip(“content.swf”,_root.getNextHighestDepth());
}

var preloader:Object = new Object();
clipLoader.addListener(preloader);

preloader.onLoadStart = function(target){
target.createTextField(“my_txt”,target.getNextHighestDepth,0,0,100,20);
target.my_txt.selectable = false;
}

preloader.onLoadProgress = function (target, loadedBytes, totalBytes){
target.my_txt.text = Math.floor((loadedBytes/totalBytes)*100)+”%”
target_mc._visible = true;
}

preloader.onLoadComplete = function(target){
target.my_txt._visible = false;
}
stop();

What I have done here is set a Textfield called my_txt on top of the loaded clip to give indication of how much data was downloaded at runtime.

You can easily replace the text field by a movieClip as your preloader.

Tip: You can invoke the onLoadInit method to the MovieClipLoader to be called when the first frame of your content.swf has been loaded.

Welcome to my blog!

flashcraving — Sun, 18 May 2008 18:57:35 +0000

Hi all,

I have decided to set up this blog to post all my Web and Graphic design ressources to the web community, This is for proficient and beginner Web and Graphic Designer. This blog will cover mainly Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator and HMTL/CSS, XML. I will post post tutorials and some very useful links I have been gathering. Feel free to comment and post some link on here as well. The web is about sharing after all…

And check out my portfolio at mycommunitycreative.co.uk.

Hello!

flashcraving — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:13:24 +0000

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!