This wee preloader script from I
Preloader in AS3
Random decimals added to numbers AS3
Pretty stupid thing I just tripped up on, but I was incrementing through a loop, adding 0.05 to an angle each time (for circular movement). I noticed after a while, the number, which should have just changed between 0.00, 0.05, 0.1 etc. was ending up being 0.15000000000000002 and therefore screwing everything up - for no... Continue Reading →
Getting the class of a DisplayObject in AS3
Handy wee snippet: Class(getDefinitionByName(getQualifiedClassName(myMC))) (Remember to import flash.utils) Then you can bang it out like-a-so: var mc:MovieClip = new targetClass(); eg. this below, gets the class of an instance called 'page0' within contentMC, creates a new one and adds it to the stage: var targetClass:Class = Class(getDefinitionByName(getQualifiedClassName(contentMC.page0))); var tempPage:DisplayObject = new targetClass(); addChild(tempPage); And if... Continue Reading →
Dynamically add Filters to objects AS3
To add filter effects to DisplayObjects in AS3 it is just as easy as applying text formatting or color formatting - well, there's an extra intermediary in there but it's much the same idea. Easier to show an example than to explain: var blurred:BlurFilter = new BlurFilter(blurAmount, blurAmount); var filters:Array = [blurred]; myMc.filters = filters;... Continue Reading →
Tracing color values to Hex in AS3
trace(colorValue.toString(16)) Will trace out to hex. Handy.
Menus disappearing in Captivate 3?
Are you losing your menus in Captivate when you're working with flash clips? There's a simple but obscure work around for this! Solution: Open up your library tab and click on a few different library items - the top menu should now work correctly. No more restarting Captivate every time you touch an embedded animation!... Continue Reading →
Image scaling ‘jittery’ or pixelated in Flash when tweening
If your jpgs, pngs and gifs are scaling all jittery in Flash, hard-cutting to pixels and appearing to shimmer or bounce when you tween the image you can fix that really easily: find the image you're tweening in the library, right-click, select its properties and choose 'Allow Smoothing'. That'll sort you right out. A co-worker of... Continue Reading →
Applying filters to displayobjects in AS3
mySprite.filters = [new BlurFilter(5, 5, 3)]; You'd have a blurry box after that.
Get clean URLs to work in WAMP
If you can't get WAMP to do clean URLs for you in Drupal you may need to enable the rewrite_module in WAMP if you've just set it up. Click the tray icon » Apache » Apache modules » rewrite_module (should be checked)
Replace Characters in a String AS3
Using split() and join() you can strip or insert characters into strings very easily. The below function can be called to do just that. /// Replaces characters in a string. public static function replaceChars(targetString:String, charactersToStrip:String, replacementCharacters:String = "") { targetString = targetString.split(charactersToStrip).join(replacementCharacters); return targetString; }
CSS Stylesheets for htmlText fields in Flash AS3
You can make your htmltext fields have highlights etc by applying some minor CSS styles to the htmltext fields in Flash. var theCSS:StyleSheet = new StyleSheet(); theCSS.setStyle("a:link", {color:'#361B59', textDecoration:'underline'}); theCSS.setStyle("a:hover", {color:'#532C8F', textDecoration:'none'}); contentField.styleSheet = theCSS; More things you can do: http://www.adobe.com/livedocs/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/flash/text/StyleSheet.html
HTML Characters in XML
I've been doing some work with XML in AS3 and needing to have the XML contain HTML characters for an htmltext field in Flash - for links and lists etc. Few ways to approach that: <![CDATA[ "Rampant <'s and &'s in the XML fields that XML ignores due to special CDATA tags within the fields"... Continue Reading →