Flash for Web Design Gallery Done
June 30, 2009
I finished the basic flash gallery with scrolling menu. I had to play some trickery to prevent the user from being able to access the menu until the swfs are loaded. I tried to externally load all of the swfs, only to discover that it would be a pain to access the buttons within the menu swf. So I took the cheese-mo approach and “hide” the menu using the alpha filter until the screen shots are loaded. Heheh … boneheaded, but effective. I haven’t made a load screen yet, so bear with it as it loads. Here’s a link to the swf.
I learned a lot about the limitations of ActionScript doing this little project. The main limitation is that there is no “evaluate” function in ActionScript 3.0. I guess this has to do with ActionScript compiling to something like an executable. It just can’t make stuff and run it at runtime. Therefore, I couldn’t use loops and arrays to automate the creation of the buttons and event handlers. I’ve decided to make a basic JavaScript version of this for greater flexibility. To be honest ~6 is my threshold before I want to automate the process. It’s also a pain in the butt trying to access elements from swf to swf. Anyhow, I’m glad I did this, so now in the future I just have plug images and swfs into it and I can change the appearence of the gallery within the Flash IDE.
Entry Filed under: Flash/Actionscript, Web Design. Tags: buttons, Flash, Portfolio, swf, Web Design.
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