Weblenium » Flash

ColorToy 2.0 – the Flash Colour Scheme Generator

phorner — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:10:05 +0000

If you are like me and have no idea what colour schemes look good or not, then this small Flash application is for you. ColorToy 2.0 allows you to enter your own RGB values, and it will display eight other colours that can be used in conjunction with the colour you specify. Great for creating themes, or for those like me without any graphical skills whatsoever.

If you don’t have a particular colour that you want to base your design on, or you are just searching for inspiration, you can click on the “Random” button and it will randomly generate a colour for you, along with the accompanying matching colours.

For more information: ColorToy 2.0

Reading HTML tags from XML into Flash

phorner — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:02:29 +0000

One problem that many people experience when working with XML and Flash is getting HTML tags inside the XML to be read in and rendered in Flash. Reading XML that contains HTML tags is a very common thing to do these days, as Flash gets used more and more to create applications since the release of Adobe AIR. So here is a tutorial showing you the basics of how to do it.

XML

The trick to getting the XML parser in Flash to ignore the HTML tags is to encapsulate the text string containing the HTML tags using CDATA. Below is an example:




Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

List:Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
]]>

By encapsulating the text string inside , this tells Flash to just treat everything inside the CDATA tag as a pure string, and to ignore any HTML tags that it may contain.

Actionscript

Once this string is read into Flash and assigned to a variable (in my example, the variable name is htmlContent), you will then most likely need to display this text. Create a text field on the stage, and select the “Render text as HTML” button in the text field properties. Give the text field an instance name (e.g. “contents_txt”). Then assign the variable “htmlContent” to the “htmlText” property of the text field.

contentXML.onLoad = function() {
...
contents_txt.htmlText = htmlContent;
}

By assigning the string to “htmlText“, this tells Flash to then render the text inside the text field using the HTML tags. Simple!

I’ve created example files for you to download and look at. AS2 version is here and AS3 version is here.

Hope this helps some of you out there to get those HTML tags rendering in Flash.

Multiple file upload using jQuery and Flash

phorner — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:39:23 +0000

I was recently searching for a solution that would allow people to upload photos of their homes on Golf Home Exchange. The standard upload method using HTML forms and PHP was not good enough as their was no indication of progress. As a result, the users thought the system wasn’t responding or something had gone wrong when simply it was taking a while to upload the image. Many simply gave up and never finished the registration process.

Luckily I stumbled across Uploadify, developed by Ronnie Garcia. Uploadify is a jQuery plugin that allows the easy integration of multiple (or single) file uploads. By default, the standard File Upload dialog in browsers only allows for single selection of files. To circumvent this issue and enable multiple file uploading, Flash is used.

To get started, you will need to download the jquery.uploadify-v1.6.2.zip package, then unzip and upload the files to your website.

Then in your HTML, add this code:

This will set up Uploadify in it’s basic form. There are a ton of parameters you can set, plus event listeners (e.g. onAllComplete – triggers when all the files in the queue have been uploaded).

You can provide your own styled upload button and specifying the path to it by using the buttonImg parameter. If you want to customise the look of the upload progress bars, you will need to go into the Uploadify FLA and modify that manually.

You can also specify whether multiple files upload simultaneously or one at a time.

The script parameter allows you to specify your server side code that gets executed once a file has finished uploading. The example provided is PHP but you could use any backend development language.

There is only one downside to Uploadify, and that is that it needs Flash Player installed. If a user doesn’t have Flash Player installed, then it won’t work. I’m still looking for a File Upload solution for instances where the user doesn’t have Flash Player installed. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Apart from this small issue, Uploadify is a solid alternative to using the standard File Upload dialog.

For more information and documentation: Uploadify

Tiny and fast Tweening Platform for Flash Actionscript

phorner — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:18:43 +0000

To be able to use Flash to it’s fullest, you need to be able to control animation (or tweening as it’s better known) from within Actionscript. There have been many solutions these last few years, with Tweener being the most well known and popular. Now comes a faster and smaller tweening platform: TweenLite. Written by Jack Doyle, this new tweening platform has taken everyone by surprise.

It comes in two different versions: TweenLite and TweenMax. The difference between the two is basically the level of functionality and the amount of features (TweenLite/Max features). TweenLite has less functionality and features, and therefore is smaller in file size (5k with default plugins). TweenLite is perfect for your more basic projects. TweenMax, has far more functionality and features, but the offset is the increased file size (14k with default plugins).

To keep file size small, TweenLite and TweenMax are broken up into plugins. Each plugin contains certain features like filter blurring, color transformation and bezier tweening to name a few. The great thing about using plugins is that you only include the plugins that you need to use for your project. This reduces your Flash file size and also helps speed up tweening.

TweenLite supports both AS2 and AS3. AS2 support is great for those who still need to work with Flash Player installs earlier than Flash Player 9, though obviously the speed is much slower. The AVM2 engine (AS3) is much more efficient in performance, and you can see this in the speed tests on Jack’s site.

Speaking of performance, Jack has also created a Speed Comparison which compares all the major Tweening Platforms against TweenLite. TweenLite is incredibly fast. You can see the Speed Comparison here.

The use of TweenLite is limited to projects and games that don’t charge end users money. You can also donate to help keep Jack in development of TweenLite. The amount you donate determines which plugins you can use in your projects as not all plugins come standard with TweenLite/Max.

Having read Jack’s blog recently, it seems that several Tweening Platforms (Twease and gTween) will be merging with TweenLite/Max. This is great news as TweenLite will benefit from the coorporation of the developers.

The latest stable version is Version 10, with Version 11 Beta in the works. Some of the new features from Version 11 Beta are:

the addition of the “TimelineLite” and “TimelineMax” classes. They make building and managing sequences/groups of tweens simple.
“useFrames” feature.
a new “motionBlur” plugin that applies a realistic directional blur based on the velocity and angle of a DisplayObject’s x/y movement.
a new “dynamicProps” plugin that allows you to associate a function with a property so that every time the tween is updated, it calls that function to get the end value for the associated property.

Having used TweenLite, I can vouch for it’s speed and size. All the signs for this project look very promising and I look forward to seeing how it develops over the coming months. Great work Jack!

For more information: GreenSock Tweening Platform