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September 4th, 2008

(Flash CS3) Masking using ‘donut’ shapes within movie clips or with AS3 – it’s possible, and not too bad either

by Jen deHaan

You may have tried creating a shape that has a hole in it for a mask in Flash, and it may not have worked. Or maybe it did work and sometimes it didn’t, and you grew some extra gray hairs and threw your laptop at a wall. Or maybe you’re thinking “what the hell is she talking about now?”. I’ll start from (almost) the beginning [if you're not sure about making masks in Flash, read this super old tech support article.. it hasn't changed].

More after the jump.

read more »

Posted in ActionScript 3.0, Flash CS3, animation, instances, masking, masks, symbols, workaround | 9 Comments »

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July 31st, 2008

Creating buttons that link to different scenes, and within a scene, using ActionScript 3.0

by Jen deHaan

A common request in the comments is for information on how to create a button that links to a scene using ActionScript 3.0 in Flash CS4 or CS3. Luckily, it’s largely the same as creating a normal button that links to whatever, and uses the same gotoAndPlay format as in ActionScript 2.0. So hopefully it’ll make sense once you see it.

So if you’re unsure on general button code, see this post here: Making a button work in AS3. More links about writing button code at the end of this post.

Now you’re ready for some scenes-with-buttons action. Here’s some code:

stop();button1.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, mouseDownHandler);function mouseDownHandler(event:MouseEvent):void {
 
gotoAndStop(1, "Scene 2");
 
}

So that code assumes that you have a button with the instance name button1, and a scene in your document called Scene 2 in the Scenes panel. The number "1" in that code points to frame 1 of the scene.

So what if you want to, say, link to a particular frame? Let’s link to frame 5 of a scene called monkeyScene:

stop();button2.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, monkeyDownHandler);
 
function monkeyDownHandler(event:MouseEvent):void {
 
gotoAndStop(5, "monkeyScene");
 
}

Hope that answers the question. I’ve put an FLA file online that links each scene using buttons so you can see this in action.

Linking to buttons within a scene

There have also been questions about linking to frames within a scene. I’m not positive what the specific problem is, but I’ll take a stab at it (or at least show what seems to work for me.

Now, what causes many of the problems with Scenes in Flash (and why they are officially discouraged from use in Flash best practices – I never use ‘em unless I have next to no code in a FLA), is as follows. From what I understand, when you publish your SWF file, all of the scenes in a FLA are made into one big giant string of frames. Kind of like sticking all of your scenes into one big timeline (one big scene, essentially) and pushing it out as a SWF. Therefore, this can mess up your code. If you’re pointing to a frame 56… which one? To you it may be frame 56 of scene 3, but to Flash that may be frame 56 of the giant new timeline in the SWF that’s published.

So, it’s good to avoid scenes.

But I digress. So if you’re linking to buttons within the same scene, you could specify what scene you’re pointing to in each button. So if you’re in a scene called monkeyScene, you could make your button that’s on frame 1 point to frame 2 of monkeyScene as follows:

stop();
 
mbutton1.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, monkeyHandler1);
 
function monkeyHandler1(event:MouseEvent):void {
 
gotoAndStop(2, "monkeyScene");
 
}

I’ve uploaded another real ugly FLA file that links multiple buttons to frames within a single scene. Check out monkeyScene in the FLA file.

MORE INFORMATION ON BUTTONS:

Posted in ActionScript 3.0, Flash CS3, Flash CS4, Flash CS5, Migration, buttons | 76 Comments »

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July 29th, 2008

Set Transformation Point and Reset Transformation Point in Flash CS3

by Jen deHaan

When you right-click a symbol instance on the Stage in Flash, there are a couple new options that were added in CS3: “Set Transformation Point” and “Reset Transformation Point”. There’s not much out there about these features, as I understand they were added quietly late in the game. But they’re very useful nonetheless. The problem is it’s a bit tricky to figure out how these things are useful without knowing what the feature is or how it works – because (at least to me) it sounds like they do something when they actually do something a bit different (and once I found out what they did, it made a lot of sense). So lets run through this new feature.

  1. Drag an instance of a symbol to the Stage from the Library.
  2. Select the instance using the Free Transform tool.
  3. Drag the transformation (the white circle) to a new location on the instance.
  4. Right-click the instance and choose Set Transformation Point.
  5. Drag a new instance of that symbol to the Stage, and select it with the Free Transform tool.

As you can see, the Transformation pointof the second instance is exactly where you placed it in the first one. That’s essentially what this first option does, and it can be very handy if you’re using a bunch of instances in a FLA that need to rotate or otherwise transform from the same point – saves a lot of dragging/estimating.

As for Reset Transformation Point-

  1. Right-click the instance again, and choose Reset Transformation Point.
  2. Drag another instance onto the Stage, and select it with the Free Transform Tool.

Now the Transform point is back in the default central position for the new instances of this symbol. Alternatively, you can change the Transformation point location, and just choose Set Transformation Point again and it will save this new location for the instances.

This feature appears to work on a per-symbol basis. You can set the transformation point for all instances of a particular symbol for multiple symbols in the library. For example, you have Symbol 1 and Symbol 2 in the library. You can set the transformation point for an instance of Symbol 1, and all instances of that symbol will keep that transformation point location until you reset it or set a new location. You can independently set a transformation point for Symbol 2 and it is saved until you reset it on an instance of that symbol. And so on.

As an aside/note/whatever, remember that you can set the Transformation point to the Registrationpoint by double-clicking the white circle.

If you’re new to Flash and you’re wondering what the heck a Transformation point is – it is the point around which the symbol rotates or transforms, and looks like a white circle when you have the instance selected using the Free Transform tool. The best way you can illustrate this is by creating a new instance, and rotate it using the Free Transform tool (select the instance using the tool, and move the cursor around the edge until you see a little round arrow and then drag). Now change the location of the white circle and rotate the instance again. This also affects how the instance skews and resizes. The Transformation point has also been referred to as a “Control point” in Flash (some references in documentation are to the Control point), but it is different than the Registration point (the small black crosshair).

Posted in Flash CS3, General, Migration, animation, instances, symbols | 11 Comments »

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April 9th, 2008

Adobe TV is live

by Jen deHaan

Adobe DV guru Bob Donlon started and launched a great new site for watching video tutorials and presentations on Adobe.com called Adobe TV. Adobe TV is a site that is working to combine all of the various video resources that Adobe releases, so they’re housed in one central location. Please note that not all of the video tutorials available from Adobe are in there yet, but eventually they should all be there – so it’s like a one stop shop for learning about the products in video format. I find this pretty darn exciting, because last release I worked very hard on the Adobe Video Workshop and the Design Center for quite awhile (and of course have contributed many articles to the Developer Center) – and always knew that those resources among others are hard to find. So any steps to centralize resources and make them more discoverable is a pretty good thing as far as I’m concerned (although it doesn’t look like the Video Workshop videos are in there quite yet – I understand they will be though).

So go check it out! If you click through the “Designer” section, there are some videos on Flash. The site is also an interesting use of the technology itself.

Posted in General, Video | 3 Comments »

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March 13th, 2008

Adding more than one button to a FLA file while rocking it in ActionScript 3.0

by Jen deHaan

So there have been a number of questions on my kinda recent post about making a button in Flash CS3 or Flash CS4 using ActionScript 3.0. I will do the next couple posts on how to do the things in the questions (and actually check em out in Flash, and make an FLA to download). Update: More links about buttons and button code at the end of this post.

So if you haven’t already read or don’t know how to make a single button, head on over to the post linked above. Here, I’ll continue on to multiple buttons.

Say you have a couple buttons on a page, and you want one to go to one URL, and the second one to go to a different URL – you need to change your function names in your code so you don’t have multiples with the same name. So, you would need to do something like this:

thumbsdown_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, thumbDownHandler);
function thumbDownHandler(event:MouseEvent):void {
 navigateToURL(new URLRequest("http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/silverlight/default.aspx"));
}
thumbsup_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, thumbUpHandler);
function thumbUpHandler(event:MouseEvent):void {
 navigateToURL(new URLRequest("http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/"));
}

Note the thumbDownHandler and thumbupHandler in the code.

The source file: Mutliple buttons to URLs

So some people are instead targeting multiple frames. In that case, the code would look like this:

stop();
first_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, mouseDownHandler1);
function mouseDownHandler1(event:MouseEvent):void {
 gotoAndStop(5);
}
 
second_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, mouseDownHandler2);
function mouseDownHandler2(event:MouseEvent):void {
 gotoAndStop(10);
}

The source file: Mutliple buttons to frames

MORE INFORMATION ON BUTTONS:

Posted in ActionScript 3.0, Flash CS3, Flash CS4, Migration, buttons | 132 Comments »

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March 2nd, 2008

Loading and displaying video in Flash CS3 using ActionScript 3.0, no more video objects

by Jen deHaan

A pretty common thing to do with Flash is to play an FLV file. In ActionScript 2.0, you would do the following:

1. Create a new Video object in your Library (choose New Video from the Library’s Options menu).
2. Drag the video onto the Stage, and give it an instance name.
3. Add the following code to frame 1 of your document:

// ActionScript 2.0
var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
nc.connect(null);
var ns:NetStream = new NetStream(nc);
 
ns.onMetaData = function(item:Object):Void  {
 trace("metaData");
 // Resize video instance.
 myVideo._width = item.width;
 myVideo._height = item.height;
 // Center video instance on Stage.
 myVideo._x = (Stage.width-myVideo._width)/2;
 myVideo._y = (Stage.height-myVideo._height)/2;
};
 
ns.onCuePoint = function(item:Object):Void  {
 trace("cuePoint");
 trace(item.name+"\t"+item.time);
};
 
myVideo.attachVideo(ns);
ns.play("http://www.helpexamples.com/flash/video/cuepoints.flv");

That will play your video and also trace a couple cuepoints. Sample file: Load video with ActionScript 2.0

It’s kind of cool in ActionScript 3.0 in that you can open an empty AS3 FLA file, paste this code onto frame 1 of your document, and you’re off to the races (meaning, that’s all you have to do). As you can see, the code isn’t that much different either – so if you added video in AS2, things should seem pretty familiar. This is the same thing as above — it will also play a video and trace some cuepoints.

// ActionScript 3.0
 
var video:Video = new Video();
addChild(video);
 
var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
nc.connect(null);
 
var ns:NetStream = new NetStream(nc);
ns.client = {onMetaData:ns_onMetaData, onCuePoint:ns_onCuePoint};
 
video.attachNetStream(ns);
ns.play("http://www.helpexamples.com/flash/video/cuepoints.flv");
 
function ns_onMetaData(item:Object):void {
 trace("metaData");
 // Resize video instance.
 video.width = item.width;
 video.height = item.height;
 // Center video instance on Stage.
 video.x = (stage.stageWidth - video.width) / 2;
 video.y = (stage.stageHeight - video.height) / 2;
}
 
function ns_onCuePoint(item:Object):void {
 trace("cuePoint");
 trace(item.name + "\t" + item.time);
}

Sample file: Load video with ActionScript 3.0

Posted in ActionScript 2.0, ActionScript 3.0, FLV, Flash CS3, Migration, Video | 30 Comments »

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February 25th, 2008

So this AIR thing was released but I use Flash CS3… what now?

by Jen deHaan

So even though I knew there was something released for Flash CS3 today, it might not be too obvious when it comes to actually finding out about it and installing it and such.

Without further ado, what you should do:

1. Make sure you have the right Flash Player, 9.0.2: http://www.adobe.com/support/flash/downloads.html#902

2. Install the AIR Runtime: http://get.adobe.com/air/.

3. Install the AIR updater for Flash CS3: Windows | Mac [If you have updated before, scope out these update instructions] [If you're running a non-English version, or want more info than the above, scope out the download page]

4. Open Flash CS3. Now you’ll see the AIR document option on the Start page:

air-01.JPG (click to enlarge)

5. Go to the Flash Dev Center (AIR for Flash) and Product Info / Showcase and for more info. There isn’t a whole load of info out there for Flash developers (or designers) yet – I reckon there will be though. I’ll try something basic out myself and put it up here.

6. Read this article: Sudoku on Adobe AIR: Migrating a Flash application to the desktop

And if YOU make something AIRish with Flash, please let me know! We really need some more Flash authoring examples up there in that showcase, and at any rate, your work will inspire others :)

“What if I’m using Dreamweaver?”:
If you’re looking for the Dreamweaver extension for AIR, you need to look in the… AJAX section. You can find the extension download here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/tools/ajax/#section-2

Posted in AIR for Flash, Flash CS3, General | 6 Comments »

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February 25th, 2008

Making a button work in Flash CS3, CS4 or CS5 with ActionScript 3.0 – it’s not too bad

by Jen deHaan

So I used to monitor comments coming in from the CS3 Video Workshop, which contains a few hundred video tutorials on the CS3 products. Some of the comments that came in regarding the Flash videos was how people were having frustrations about how to set up button code with ActionScript 3.0. I thought that’s where I’d start out, with a simple example that compares the two. So I’ll show you how to make a button work in Flash CS3 or Flash CS4 using ActionScript 3.0.

Luckily, the set up is pretty much the same assuming you put code on the Timeline. If you didn’t, it will be a bit of a change and you’ll need to follow the steps below.

read more »

Posted in ActionScript 2.0, ActionScript 3.0, Flash CS3, Flash CS4, Flash CS5, buttons | 376 Comments »

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February 22nd, 2008

Welcome to Flashthusiast!

by Jen deHaan

So the world needs another Flash blog, that’s what I said. Hi. Welcome to yet another blog on Flash.

But hey, have you noticed a lot of blogs have gone from talking about Flash to talking about Flex? or Air? or… you know, things that aren’t Flash anymore and not nearly as cool and awesome as Flash?

So maybe the world DOES need another Flash blog!

Hi, I’m Jen deHaan (although a lot of people call me Jan DeHann) and I like Flash. I confess. So much so, I went back to the Flash team (I was on the Flash team as a doc writer, then left the Flash team to do instructional design for the web and video products, then came back to the Flash team because that’s where I belong. ) So two of you might be thinking “but didn’t she have a blog or something that she sort of abandoned?” Well, yeah. Actually I’ve had three blogs that I’ve abandoned. No no… four. Anyway, three of those other blogs were using old versions of Movable Type, and they’re kind of boring or outdated and I’m too lazy to make them look nice on my own. The fourth blog used Movable Type but it was for my old job I don’t do anymore. And I had this domain that is pretty wacky and hard to spell. So I guess that’s enough reasons… hey none of you are reading anymore!

OK, so on to some stuff about Flash. Flash AUTHORING, the original Flash. I hope that I won’t neglect the blog or anything. I’ll give it an honest go this time.

By the way, we’re working on some real cool things right now on the Flash team that you might have seen at the MAX sneak peeks! I’ll definitely talk about those things as soon as I’m allowed to.

Posted in General | 10 Comments »

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