After Andy’s ‘Mea Culpa‘ why wouldn’t it be…
But this is so much better and bigger, learning many lessons from the last launch – StomperNet strikes again!
Teamed up with Paul Lemberg a new product called FormulaFIVE (F5 for short).
Just launched a video to excite the industry!
So check out stomperf5.com now!
Rich Shupe and Zevan Rosser’s Learning ActionScript 3.0: A Beginner’s Guide.
This book is published by O’Reilly and is part of the Adobe Developer Library.
This book was a great way for me to move into as3. I’m coming from a visual design background with little formal programming training, to know more of my background check my about page. Being mostly self taught, I found myself learning about basic programming skills with this book. This book helped me catch up to the as3 world and I began doing some really cool things in flash once I had a base for understanding all the differences and new things in as3.
I really enjoyed the visual aspects of this book as well. Many of the diagrams and illustrations have the hand drawn look. Like so:
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to better understand actionscript and actionscrip3 more specifically. It’s a great helper at migrating from as2 to as3. On the cover, it claims to teach “everything needed for non-traditional programmers–web designers, GUI-based Flash developers, those new to Actionscript, visual learners–to understand how Actionscript works and how to use it in everyday projects.” I would agree with that whole-heartedly. All I can say is that after reading it and working through some of the samples included, I better understand AS3 and am confident that through the foundation it has helped me lay I will soon become an actionscript ninja.
Thanks Ryan and Zevan!
I’ve been thinking about this blog and what kind of content I want to be creating for the world and yes, you. I really enjoy creating working tutorials and open source project or components available to download and learn from. I make these available so that you are able to pick it apart and hopefully learn something from it. And in the best of scenarios it helps you solve some problem in one of your own projects, or you contact me and are able to teach me a better way I could have done it (my personal favorite). There are no shortcuts to this kind of stuff. Learning is a process, and the way I learn (especially when it’s related to flash) is to get my hands on something that already works and pick it apart. So that’s what I try to provide in my “tutorials”- I use the term loosely because, they aren’t really walkthroughs per say, but more working examples for you to look into and see how it has to (or at least could) fit together and work. I have really enjoyed the direction I’ve gone with the blog, and to get to my point…
I have also learned a lot of what I know from books. Reading books and understanding the whys to all the ways things are done in actionscript has helped me a lot. It may have been an epiphany, but I thought – why not share the ones that have made the biggest support for me, or at least list the books that sit the closest to my keyboard when I am working through a project.
So books are good. I will be continuing with my tutorials and open source working examples and put up as much code as I can, but I want to also talk about where I learn some of the things I learn.
So if you follow the blog, thanks! You’ll start to see a larger variety in posts. Dare I put this in writing but I’m also trying to increase the frequency of posts. I’ve been pretty good at getting at least one post a week, so I’ll try to bump it up to at least 1 and a half posts a week 
Go ahead and subscribe to my feed if you want to be sure not to miss any of them, and please jump back to the posts when it’s interesting and let me know, comment with any books that have helped you better understand you specialty.
Clean slick preloader. Rounded bar with gradient fill and bevel and glow filter. All actionscript driven, no animations to bloat file size. Rounded corners don’t distort as width changes.
Includes loading statistics for download.
Calculates the following:
Easy to use, just paste in frame 1 of your file. (actionscript code included!)
Customize color easily. Edit the fill color of the preloader_bar movie clip in the library.
Customize font easily. Edit the font for the text box named feedback on the text layer of the preloader mc.
See my previous post about how to do this with as2: Detect Flash Player Version | Actionscript based detection method (as2)
Recently I had a requirement that I had to detect which version of the flash player was currently installed. This is a normal thing, we do it all the time when embedding flash into html, we detect which version of the player is installed and if the user has an old version they are invited to upgrade…
But what about finding the flash version from within flash? An actionscript based detection method? I hadn’t ever thought about doing that…
Actionscript 3 now uses the flash system capabilities class to report all it’s “capabilities”. First we have to import it and then we have access to all the details through the Capabilities object, such as operating system, language, pixel aspect ration and flash player version. There are a ton of others and I’ve included them in the trace statements.
1 | import flash.system.Capabilities; |
1 | var flashPlayerVersion:String = Capabilities.version; |
This returns a string, 3 letter operating system, a space, and then the version number as four numbers seperated with commas. (just like eval(‘$version’); in as2)
I display the flashPlayerVersion and to split it out I split the string on the space, and then split the version number with the comma delimiter and display them all.
Here’s what mine is (gif):
And here’s what yours is (swf):
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 | import flash.system.Capabilities; var flashPlayerVersion:String = Capabilities.version; var osArray:Array = flashPlayerVersion.split(' '); var osType:String = osArray[0]; //The operating system: WIN, MAC, LNX var versionArray:Array = osArray[1].split(',');//The player versions. 9,0,115,0 var majorVersion:Number = parseInt(versionArray[0]); var majorRevision:Number = parseInt(versionArray[1]); var minorVersion:Number = parseInt(versionArray[2]); var minorRevision:Number = parseInt(versionArray[3]); vers.text = flashPlayerVersion; feedback.text = "Operating System: "+osType + "\n" + "Major Version: "+majorVersion + "\n" + "Major Revision: "+majorRevision + "\n" + "Minor Version: "+minorVersion + "\n" + "Minor Revision: "+minorRevision; trace("Operating System: "+osType); trace("Major Version: "+majorVersion); trace("Major Revision: "+majorRevision); trace("Minor Version: "+minorVersion); trace("Minor Revision: "+minorRevision); trace("--other capabilities--"); trace("avHardwareDisable: " + Capabilities.avHardwareDisable); trace("hasAccessibility: " + Capabilities.hasAccessibility); trace("hasAudio: " + Capabilities.hasAudio); trace("hasAudioEncoder: " + Capabilities.hasAudioEncoder); trace("hasEmbeddedVideo: " + Capabilities.hasEmbeddedVideo); trace("hasMP3: " + Capabilities.hasMP3); trace("hasPrinting: " + Capabilities.hasPrinting); trace("hasScreenBroadcast: " + Capabilities.hasScreenBroadcast); trace("hasScreenPlayback: " + Capabilities.hasScreenPlayback); trace("hasStreamingAudio: " + Capabilities.hasStreamingAudio); trace("hasVideoEncoder: " + Capabilities.hasVideoEncoder); trace("isDebugger: " + Capabilities.isDebugger); trace("language: " + Capabilities.language); trace("localFileReadDisable: " + Capabilities.localFileReadDisable); trace("manufacturer: " + Capabilities.manufacturer); trace("os: " + Capabilities.os); trace("pixelAspectRatio: " + Capabilities.pixelAspectRatio); trace("playerType: " + Capabilities.playerType); trace("screenColor: " + Capabilities.screenColor); trace("screenDPI: " + Capabilities.screenDPI); trace("screenResolutionX: " + Capabilities.screenResolutionX); trace("screenResolutionY: " + Capabilities.screenResolutionY); trace("serverString: " + Capabilities.serverString); |
Here’s the source fla file: flash version detection actionscript method (as3)
Integrating the clipboard of the operating system with your flash projects is sometimes essential. It’s a very simple and boils down to one basic method… System.setClipboard(). I’ve found a couple other things help the user experience though, such as selecting the text that gets copied and giving the user some sort of feedback to let them know that the text was successfully copied. Here’s a simple way to do it. Have any suggestions to make it better?
I’ve included an as2 version as well as as3. I’ve promised myself to migrate to as3, so I’m not coding anything in 2 that I don’t do in 3 also. This was to discourage me from coding in as2 and to encourage me to code as3, but also let me learn by doing it in both to see the actual differences if I was stuck doing a project in as2. I figured this could help others see the differences between the two versions of actionscript a bit easier and make their own migration as well!
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 | textBox.textBox.text = "Click this text box to copy the text or click the COPY button below. You will see feedback to the user and this text copied to your clipboard!\n\n"+ 'copyButton.onRelease = textBox.onPress = function(){\n\tSelection.setFocus("textBox");\n\tSelection.setSelection(0, textBox.text.length);\n\tSystem.setClipboard(textBox.text);\n\ttrace("copied: "+textBox.text);\n\tfeedback("Text Copied!");\n}'; copyButton.onRelease = textBox.onPress = function(){ Selection.setFocus("textBox.textBox"); Selection.setSelection(0, textBox.textBox.text.length); System.setClipboard(textBox.textBox.text); trace("copied: "+textBox.textBox.text); textFeedback("Text Copied!"); } function textFeedback(theFeedback:String){ feedback.text = theFeedback; setTimeout(function(){feedback.text="";}, 1200); } |
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 | textBox.text = "Click this text box to copy the text or click the COPY button below. You will see feedback to the user and this text copied to your clipboard!\n\n"+ 'function copyText(e:MouseEvent):void{\n\ttextBox.setSelection(0, textBox.text.length)\n\tSystem.setClipboard(textBox.text);\n\ttrace("copied: "+textBox.text);\n\ttextFeedback("Text Copied!");\n}'; //set it so the textBox selection will show even when textBox has no focus textBox.alwaysShowSelection = true; textBox.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, copyText); copyButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, copyText); function copyText(e:MouseEvent):void{ textBox.setSelection(0, textBox.text.length) System.setClipboard(textBox.text); trace("copied: "+textBox.text); textFeedback("Text Copied!"); } function textFeedback(theFeedback:String):void { feedback.text = theFeedback; setTimeout(function(){feedback.text="";}, 1200); } |
Source files: clipboard_as3.fla clipboard_as2+as3.zip
Thanks for your patience as I’ve been tinkering with the theme, layout and css of circlecube.com.
I started with a free theme from Justin Tadlock, Options Theme, available at theme hybrid. I’ve changed that theme quite a bit, from restyling it to fixing bugs I found and updated many other things on the site as well. So the reason I’m going on about it is I think I’m finished… and I’m asking you to let me know if you see anything that looks odd or fishy, or even just want to make a suggestion or comment on how much you like/hate the redesign. Comment on this post or contact me!
And as always, if there’s something you would like me to write about or have questions you can also contact me. I’ve even set up a poll in the sidebar showing post ideas I have which you can vote on and encourage me to write the one(s) you want most first! So let me know what you want, it encourages me to write more as well. And be sure to subscribe to the circlecube rss feed so you won’t miss anything that’s coming up!
Loading ...
from Twitter shared from reader
asfunction (TextEvent.LINK) Tutorial for AS3 | Flash HTML Link to call actionscript function | Tutorial
Overview
Earlier I wrote a tutorial article about asfunction in as2. Now that I’ m into as3, surprise surprise asfunction has been depreciated and now to replace it is the LINK TextEvent. Dispatched when a user clicks a hyperlink in an HTML-enabled text field, where the URL begins with “event:”. The remainder of the URL after “event:” will be placed in the text property of the LINK event.
This differs from the asfunction method in that we must add an event listener (addEventListener) to the textField object, the event listener specifies which function will be called in the event of a link click and there is no way to send arguments along with the event (AFAIK). But it’s easy enought to use one link event function for all your link events and put in a simple switch statement to coordinate the desired results…
Steps
Example
Actionscript
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
"Here's a normal link to <a href='http://bloc.circlecube.com'>circlecube</a> putting the link into the href attribute like normal!\n"+
"<a href='event:clickLink'>Click this circlecube</a>, to see the text event link in action! \n"+
"And some more links that don't go anywhere, but they do call functions in actionscript. "+
"Click this to move <a href='event:moveUp'>UP</a>, click me move back "+
"<a href='event:moveDown'>DOWN</a>.\n"+
"Also, one last example <a href='event:testing'>click for a trace test</a>";
//create and initialize css
var myCSS:StyleSheet = new StyleSheet();
myCSS.setStyle("a:link", {color:'#0000CC',textDecoration:'none'});
myCSS.setStyle("a:hover", {color:'#0000FF',textDecoration:'underline'});
myHTML.styleSheet = myCSS;
myHTML.htmlText = myHTMLText;
myHTML.addEventListener(TextEvent.LINK, linkHandler);
function linkHandler(linkEvent:TextEvent):void {
switch (linkEvent.text) {
case "clickLink":
clickLink();
break;
case "moveUp":
moveUp();
break;
case "moveDown":
moveDown();
break;
default:
giveFeedback(linkEvent.text);
}
}
//function to be called from html text
function clickLink():void {
giveFeedback("Hyperlink clicked!");
var myURL:String = "http://blog.circlecube.com";
var myRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest(myURL);
try {
navigateToURL(myRequest);
}
catch (e:Error) {
// handle error here
giveFeedback(e);
}
}
//another function to be called from html text, recieves one argument
function moveUp():void {
feedback.y -= 10;
giveFeedback("Up");
}
//a simple trick to allow passing of multiple arguments
function moveDown():void {
feedback.y += 10;
giveFeedback("Down");
}
function giveFeedback(str):void {
trace(str);
feedback.appendText(str +"\n");
feedback.scrollV = feedback.maxScrollV;
}
Source
Download the fla here: textlinkevent_as3.fla