HDSlide an AS2 Class For Making Things Slide – taterboy
January 7th, 2010 | Filed under: ActionScript 2, Flash, Free Components/Classes

HDSlide is a collection of code brought together in an effort to make one actionsScript 2 class that will fulfill all your actionScript sliding needs. This version is very versatile with two completely different animation modes.

Animation Modes:
One animation mode will change the speed of the sliding animation based on how far the mouse is moved away from the center. When the mouse is in the middle, the animation moves very slowly, then speeds up as the mouse moves toward the edges. The other mode is more like scrolling, if your mouse is at the left side or top of the slide area, the slide will be at the beginning. As the mouse is moved to the other side, the sliding MovieClip will scroll based on the mouses position between the two extremes.

Current Samples:
The FLA contains two samples that show off just a few usage variations. The FLA was built in a hurry, so it is not an example of how things should be done, it is just a sample of what is possible. There are many more possibilities, just download the source and experiment. One example not shown is the ability to pause the mouse move detection using “pauseSlide(true)” while still having the slideTo() method fully functional.

Usage:
1. Create a MovieClip to be scrolled.
2. Then mask that MovieClip with another MovieClip.
3. Give them both instance names.
4. Import the class

 import com.hdi.as2.HDSlide;

5. Create a new instance of the class with the instance names above in the arguments.

var hSlide:HDSlide  = new HDSlide(menuMC, menuMask);

That’s it to make a simple sliding movieClip.
Read More »

Technorati Tags: ActionScript 2, animation, AS2, easing, Flash, mask, movieclip, scroll, slide

| No Comments »

Flash AS2 Count Down Timer – taterboy
August 5th, 2009 | Filed under: ActionScript 2, Flash, Free Components/Classes

Here is a simple countdown timer that is easily configured using flashVars. Below are all the available settings.

On April 12, 2010 our blog will be 2 years old.

Read More »

Technorati Tags: ActionScript 2, AS2, countdown, custom, Flash, free, timer

| 3 Comments »

HDflix an AS2 FLV Player For Custom Skins – taterboy
May 10th, 2009 | Filed under: ActionScript 2, Design, Flash, Free Components/Classes, Tips, Video

There are many video players and player skins available online, but it can take hours to build something completely custom. Here is an AS2 FLV player that can make creating completely custom Flash video players a lot easier. HDflix is a fully functional player, but allows you to assign your own artwork to the player controls. This is not skinning an existing component, it is creating artwork, then assigning the artwork pieces to each control. Once a control is assigned, rollovers, button state events and control functions are automatically applied to your artwork.

See the Readme file and demo below.
Read More »

Technorati Tags: ActionScript 2, AS2, custom skins, flash video player, flv, skins, Video Player

| 11 Comments »

Flash AS2 Pro Video Player – taterboy
March 7th, 2009 | Filed under: ActionScript 2, Flash, Free Components/Classes, Tips, Video

There are a some really nice video/swf players out there already, here is mine. It was first built in 2005, thus the out-dated design, but has been upgraded with some nice features over the years.

Some of the features include dynamic colors on the LED display that can be easily updated to match a site color scheme. Dynamic video size, AutoLoad, Jpeg placeholder, cookie support, and can run standalone or loaded into your own Flash app.

Another interesting feature is a loading system that tries to figure out the client’s download speed and buffer the correct amount. This works pretty well in most cases but some web servers can be unreliable when it comes to streaming video with a consistent data rate. So buffer times will very with each download.

Included are FLAs to skin the GUI and update the display logos. This is the pro version we were planning on selling, but were too busy with other projects and never got around to it.

Just a heads up, I have another video app that will be released shortly. It is very similar to my Scrollbar class, in that you do not skin it, the code wraps around artwork that you create to control flvs and audio files. That way you can go crazy with the UI design and the layout of each control. It is written in AS2 and will be coming soon, so check back.

Below is a demo and the contents of the included readme.txt file.
Read More »

Technorati Tags: AS2, custom, Flash, flv, Loading, player, scrub, swf, Video Player, volume

| 5 Comments »

Animation and Tweens Class for AS2 – taterboy
February 25th, 2009 | Filed under: ActionScript 2, Animation, Flash, Free Components/Classes, Tutorials

This is a two in one post, the first half will demonstrate how to build a small but powerful animation engine. The second half is a demo and source for an expanded version of the same animation engine.

The goals for our engine are:
1. Light Weight - We do not want to apply an onEnterFrame event handler on every MovieClip. Each instance of an onEnterFrame event increases processor usage, so we will use one onEnterFrame event to process all animation.

2. Robust - Issues can arise with you try daisy chain onEnterFrame events, garbage collection and rendering sequences can cause the chain to break. So we need a powerful management system.

3. Flexible - Some projects we only need to animate _alpha, others will need to tween _x, _y, _rotation, _xScale or a combination of them all. With a little extra code we can make this animation engine process most MovieClip Properties.
Read More »

Technorati Tags: Action Script 2, alpha, animation, AS2, Flash, rotation, tween, xscale, yscale

| No Comments »

Detecting Standalone or Plugin Flash Players – taterboy
January 26th, 2009 | Filed under: ActionScript 2, ActionScript 3, Flash, Flash AS2 to AS3, Flex, Tips

Maintaining version control on project files can easily get out of control when saving multiple versions of the same file. One tip is covered in an earlier post about swf based relative urls for flash/flex files. This tip works even if the host file is moved to a different locations. This way we do not need to save a live version and a local build version.

Why would I care which Flash Player type is used?
Some projects, like kiosks, will end up as a Flash Projector or AIR Application. Until the project is finalized and approved we may need to preview the project for our clients on the web. In AS3 some stage methods are only available to the standalone player. Instead of saving two versions of the same project, one to test the Projector functionality and another for online approvals; we can build one multi-purpose file.
Read More »

Technorati Tags: AS2 to AS3, Flash, Flash Player, Flex, kiosk, standalone, system capabilities, version control

| No Comments »

SWF Based Relative URLs in Flash or Flex – taterboy
January 17th, 2009 | Filed under: ActionScript 2, ActionScript 3, Flash, Flash AS2 to AS3, Flex, Tips

When a Flash/Flex app loads into a browser, all urls for the swf are now relative to the file that is hosting the swf and not the location of the swf file itself. This can create issues between testing the swf locally and viewing it on the live site.

Case Study:
When building a demo to display on this blog I have to create one version with relative urls to distribute as source and a separate sample for preview using absolute urls. This is because of the setup of the blog, some files like the index page display from the root of the blog while all the article files have unique urls based on title and date.
Read More »

Technorati Tags: absolute url, AS2 to AS3, external files, Flash, Flex, loaderInfo, path, relative url

| 4 Comments »

Easy Custom Scrollbar Class for TextFields (AS2) – taterboy
September 17th, 2008 | Filed under: ActionScript 2, Design, Flash, Free Components/Classes, Tips

Here is the twin brother of the Easy Scrollbar MovieClip Class that works with TextFields. It does not require the masking and is perfect for Input TextFields. It has all the features of the MovieClip version except for easing. TextFields scroll one line at a time which is not very smooth.
Read More »

Technorati Tags: ActionScript 2, easy, Flash, scroll, Scrollbar, TextField

| 1 Comment »

Easy Flash Custom Scrollbar Class (AS2) – taterboy
September 10th, 2008 | Filed under: ActionScript 2, Design, Flash, Free Components/Classes, Tips

I know there are some really nice scroll components similar to this on the web, but I think this still has merit. It seems like every job comes with a different scroll bar design, the buttons and scroll bar can be any shape, size or configuration. While most Flash scroll bar components are easily skinned, this is kind of the opposite of skinning. You create the artwork, convert each item to a MovieClip, then apply the class. The code wraps the artwork instead of the artwork skinning the code.

This class started around 3 years ago and has been modified for many different projects and continued to evolve into what we have today. It is not perfect, but it can handle most jobs needing custom scroll bars.
Read More »

Technorati Tags: ActionScript 2, ease, easing, Flash, resize, Scroll Bar, Scrollbar

| 64 Comments »

Flash and Javascript Communication – taterboy
August 20th, 2008 | Filed under: ActionScript 2, Flash, Tutorials

Passing Flash variables to Javascript, passing Javscript variables to Flash, Calling Flash functions from Javascript.

There are a few conventions for getting Flash and Javascript to communicate like fscommand, getURL, LocalConnection, URL-encoded variables, FlashVars, SetVariable and TCallLabel to name a few.

Here is a little demo using Flash’s External Interface and Javascript. It is more elegant then most of the procedures I have used in the past. Between External Interface and FlashVars, you should be able to fill most of your needs.
Read More »

Technorati Tags: Actionscript, External Interface, Flash, functions, Javascript, variables

| 22 Comments »