Oct 04 2011

How to detect mouse over / out on href links?

Category: AS3,TextArea — admin @ 12:47 am

Introduction to com.doitflash.text.TextArea (Part 3)

You’re able to use basic CSS for styling your HTML content being used in TextFields via the htmlText property. you can change the color, size or put an underline when rolling over an href link in TextField.

it’s good and makes your content look better, but what if you want to call a custom function when you mouse over a link? what if, I donno, what if you have a tooltip enabled in your project and wish to show a tooltip window when you mouse over a specefic link in your text block?

TextArea is here to help you with that! with a little change in your html content and you will be able to call custom functions inside your text blocks.

If you have not downloaded the TextArea class yet > http://doitflash.com/, download it now. install the classes in your class path and try the following sample code below.

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
import flash.text.TextFieldAutoSize;
import com.doitflash.text.TextArea;
     
var _textArea:TextArea = new TextArea();
_textArea.condenseWhite = true;
_textArea.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
_textArea.embedFonts = false;
_textArea.border = true;
     
_textArea.holder = this;
_textArea.client = this; // must be where you have your 'allowed functions' saved
_textArea.funcSecurity = true;
_textArea.allowedFunctions(myCustomFunction, funcOnOver, funcOnOut);
_textArea.mouseRollOverEnabled = true;
_textArea.fmlText = "<p>This is a <a href='event:myCustomFunction();onMouseOver:funcOnOver();onMouseOut:funcOnOut()'>link</a>.</p>";
     
this.addChild(_textArea);
     
function myCustomFunction():void
{
     trace("custome function");
}
function funcOnOver():void
{
     trace("rollOver text = " + _textArea.rolledOverText);
     trace("rollOver url = " + _textArea.rolledOverUrl);
}
function funcOnOut():void
{
     trace("rollOut");
}

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Oct 03 2011

how to load animated gif inside text field?

Category: AS3,TextArea — admin @ 3:02 am

Introduction to com.doitflash.text.TextArea (Part 2)

it’s easy to load external images into your text fields, you just use the native img tag like below and it will load and be shown inside your text block.

1
<img src="image.gif" alt="" width="150" height="150" align="left" />

I’m not going to talk about how you initialize the TextField class and then set the htmlText property of it, it’s easy and there are millions of samples on the net to show you how you can create a TextField instance to load external data.

what I’m going to talk about in this post is how you can load animated gif files inside your Text field! because trying to load a gif file in TextField will just result in showing the first frame of the gif file. follow steps below and you will be able to load and play external animated gif files in no time.

You need to have downloaded the TextArea class > http://doitflash.com/
You should also have downloaded the image module > http://doitflash.com/?portfolio_mod=image-module

Downloading a module package means you will be able to use a new tag in your text field. to use a new tag you need the tag’s module swf file and the module package has all the files you need to compile the required swf file.

so, after downloading the image module package, go to “Src” folder to create the “TextModule_image.swf” file. leave this file for a while and we’ll get back to it a bit later.

now, open your AS3 project and insert this code:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
import flash.text.TextFieldAutoSize;
import com.doitflash.text.TextArea;
     
var _textArea:TextArea = new TextArea();
_textArea.condenseWhite = true;
_textArea.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
_textArea.embedFonts = false;
_textArea.border = true;
_textArea.multiline = true;
_textArea.wordWrap = true;
_textArea.width = 200;

_textArea.holder = this;
_textArea.client = this;
_textArea.assetsPath = "assets/"; // where you have stored your module swf files
_textArea.fmlText = "load an image with the \"image\" tag: <image src='image.gif' width='140' height='140' align='left' id='id1' />";
     
this.addChild(_textArea);

Using TextArea instead of the classic TextField is the key and as you see in the above sample, you initialize and use the TextArea class just like how you used to work with TextField, the only changes are that you are setting the location of your module swf files with the “assetsPath” property and you use the “fmlText” rather than the classic “htmlText”.

the assets path is the location where you will store all your tag swf modules.

I hope this has been helpful.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Sep 30 2011

What is TextArea and why/where to use it?

Category: AS3,TextArea — admin @ 11:10 pm

Introduction to com.doitflash.text.TextArea (Part 1)

Have you ever wished you could detect mouse rollover/rollout on href links inside your TextFields?
Have you ever tried to load an animated gif file but were disappointed to see animated gif files are not supported with the img tag?
Have you ever wished to load an external swf inside your TextField and be able to interact with it?
Have you ever happened to need to call custom functions in your AS3 project from your text field links and be able to pass arguments with it?

You may be surprised to know that with the original TextField class from adobe, you can make all wishes above come true! but doing them all will take a bloody long time and there are many small facts that you should be aware of before you can do all these stuff with TextField. I’m talking about little facts that there are no documents about them anywhere on the net.

to save time, you could easily use the new TextArea class. TextArea can be a full alternative to TextField and working with it is just exactly similar to how you work with TextField. it’s just that it does some more stuff than TextField which will solve all the questions above.

check out the demo here: http://doitflash.com/demo/main/ here you’ll find all the powers of TextArea.

to start using TextArea, download it for free from here: http://www.doitflash.com/ then copy the classes to your class paths and replace the TextField with TextArea everywhere in your project! replacing TextField with TextArea will not change any behavior in your projects :)

read documentation there and you will see how you can use the new features. in my next posts I will try to talk more about TextArea and how you can solve the above questions.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Apr 20 2010

Free AS3 Scrollbar Class

Category: Free Files — admin @ 5:10 pm


I did a couple of searches around and I found out that you can’t easily find a free and good looking scrollbar class which supports Horizontal and Vertical scrolling both at the same time! so I decided to build one :)

then it turned out that it actually does even more than just scrolling horizontally and vertically!!! you can control everything also.

Here are the features of this class:

  • supports horizontal and vertical scrollers individually or you can use them both at the same time
  • the main class itself is extending MovieClip and you can simply add it to anywhere you’d like
  • the content to be scrolled, can be anything, text, html text, an image, a video file, sprite, shape, movieclip, whatever!
  • the scroll has a smooth movement and the speed is customizable
  • mouse wheel is supported
  • the scroller design can be easily modified for your own uses
  • live and runtime scroll support (if your content extends in the runtime, the scrollbar will fix itself to the new dimensions automatically)

Continue reading “Free AS3 Scrollbar Class”

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Feb 21 2010

FileSaver Data Transfer

Category: AS3 — admin @ 7:22 am

In my recent project, http://www.myflashlab.com/2010/01/27/contactform-class/ I was trying to do a lot of data transfer to and from flash to PHP (or any serverside script), I had to send attachments to php, I even had to encrypt the data before the transfer and that stuff. having to do all these things, I decided to write a class to take care of all these things for me.

so I wrote this fine class that I have named it FileSaver! :) This class is good for the following purposes:

  • you want to save a file from your flash app to your desktop.
  • you want to save a file from your flash app to your server.
  • you want to save a file to your server and send some variables along with it.
  • you want to send some variables to a server side script.
  • you can encrypt the data before sending them out to server script.

Continue reading “FileSaver Data Transfer”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Feb 21 2010

Custom Event Listener

Category: AS3 — admin @ 2:22 am

When writting your AS3 projects, you will need events. The main thing that events do is to help you make a bridge between your instances of classes. take the adobe’s MouseEvent as an example. you add a MouseEvent.CLICK listener to a movieclip so that when you click on a movieclip instance it will dispatch the “CLICK” event. it works like below as you know.

import flash.events.MouseEvent;
mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClick);
function onClick(e:MouseEvent):void
{
    trace("mc is clicked")
}

this is all good, you have used an event being built by adobe (there are many other premade events by flash if you just check the package flash.events) Continue reading “Custom Event Listener”

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Feb 21 2010

generate asDoc for flash player 10

Category: AS3 — admin @ 12:07 am

in my other post about asDoc generating I talked about my expiriences in generating asDoc but that string in the .bat file works only for flash player 9 projects! in this artical I will talk about how you ca also generate asDoc successfully for flash player 10 codes also.

first read the last post here to get ready with the whole idea. http://www.myflashlab.com/2010/02/20/how-to-generate-asdoc-from-your-class-files/

the only modification you need to make to the .bat file is:
-external-library-path “C:\Program Files\Adobe\flex_sdk_4.0.0.6898\frameworks\libs\player\10″ Continue reading “generate asDoc for flash player 10″

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Feb 20 2010

how to generate asDoc from your class files

Category: AS3 — admin @ 11:49 pm

With the launch of our new website, this site, myflashlab.com, I tried to help users use our classes with a better expirience and that was when I thought of generating adobe like AS API documentations!

to tell you the truth, at first I did not know that there’s a tool to automatically generate these nice looking documents! so the first document I generated was done totally manually with my DreamWeaver! it took a lot of time, there were so many broken links between the pages and it finally gave me a feeling that made me say, how crazy adobe is to be building these documents!

After being almost disappinted, I noticed that some open source programmes like paperVision or some other have the very same looking documentations! so I was suspisous that there must be a tool for doing this time consuming work and I was right, there is a nice tool and it’s called asDoc generator :)

In this post I will talk about my own expiriences on how I managed to generate the documentations I needed for my classes. there may be better approaches that I’m not aware of. but this is what is working for me and I am happy with. If you have a better idea or something, please share it with us. Continue reading “how to generate asDoc from your class files”

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,