Flash :: Flash/AS3 Good Development Practices Question?

Is Flash Good For Elearning Simulation Development?
Hi, there

I am thinking about using flash to develop some software simulation tutorial..mainly like show the software navigation, and then ask learners to practice the navigation. Is Flash MX good at this? Or it's better for me to find out another elearning simulation tool? If so, any recommendations?

Many thanks!!

Looking For A Good Tutorials About Grid Development For A Flash Game?
I want to create a tile based game but it seems I need to code a grid first in AS, so I wonder is there any nice and simple way to do this?

Site Development - Good Resources?
Hi, so I'm new at flash. Took a course from a Macromedia certified training centre so i know the basics. But I'm looking for resources to help me understand how to build a complex web site that utilizes animated transitions from section to section, incorporates streaming quicktime video and live data feeds from PHP based backend stuff.

Tall order.

Really, I'm looking for book reccomendations, Cd-rom training, videos, websites - anything to help ne get beyond shape tweening and basic navigation.

help!

Adding Custom Functions To A Movieclip/good Coding Practices
Hello,

I am creating a complex MovieClip object with many layers and nested MCs. I want to add several custom functions to this MovieClip in order to provide abstraction/encapsulation and manipulate it from the rest of the code.

I have created the MovieClip visually, including all its components, it was a lot faster than doing it via AS, and I can quickly manipulate it visually. Now I am wondering where to define its custom functions/attributes. I am thinking of doing it in the MCs own timeline, in its own frame 1. This sounds the most logical to me. Many articles on AS I have read however indicate that it's best to keep all code in one place, which would be the first couple of frames of the Stage. It sounds illogical to me to put the MCs code there, but then again I am a newbie and I am afraid of bumping into serious problems later on. What would you advise on this?

One more thing that got me really worried, in one of my early experiments, the methods I defined inside the MCs timeline where NOT available in the same frame of the main movie that I created instances of that clip. In other words, in frame 1 of the movie, I created several instances of that clip, and the functions I defined for them did not show up in the debugger until frame 2!

I hope this doesn't sound very confusing. I am trying to do it the cleanest and most logical way possible in terms of good programming practice. Thanks in advance.

FMS Is A Good Choice For Multiplayer Game Development?
Hi folks,

Does FMS server is a good choice for multiplayer game development?

I donâ€™t see any FMS game in the online work appropriately.. Is there any fascinating game are on the net ?

Advance thanks

Nazeer.B

Development Jobs Abroad : Flash Actionscript 3 / Director / Web Development
Anyone know of any positions abroad full time or long term contracts
ideal...

Or any good agencies to go through...

Cheers

r

Flash Best Practices
Can anyone suggest any best practices when developing a Flash game, which will be used on an html page. For example, are there any best practices when coding that I should follow to have the best possible chance of Search engines at least indexing my game, and in the best of possible worlds, ranking it for terms by use of the SDK program.

I am already, adding metadata (title and description)
Using static text for any textual graphics.

Other than that, I am not sure where to go.

Flash 8 And SEO Best Practices
Can anyone suggest any best practices when developing a Flash game, which will be used on an html page. For example, are there any best practices when coding that I should follow to have the best possible chance of Search engines at least indexing my game, and in the best of possible worlds, ranking it for terms by use of the SDK program.

I am already, adding metadata (title and description)
Using static text for any textual graphics.

Other than that, I am not sure where to go.

Best Practices With 3d In Flash
Does anyone have some best practice suggestions when dealing with importing movie clips into flash and how to optimize the bang / kb of file size??

any help whatsoever would be appreciated!!

Flash Best Practices
I'm working on a Flash project and would like to know what are considered "best practices"
Is it better to keep your flash project in one large file or several small files?Is there any limit to the amount of frames you should use? For example, is it ok to have 1000+ frames?I often hear to avoid using scenes, is this true?Do instance names need to be unique? For example, can I have several MediaPlayback components with the same instance name?

Flash Dev Practices. Give Away The FLA's?
Hi Folks,

I have been subcontracting Flash pieces for a company for a few years and recently they started asking for the FLA files as well.

It seems the real value in what I do for them is of course conceptualing, architecting, and coding visual ideas. There's also a fair amount of original art in the pieces as well. Once that's done, content could be easily swapped out, creating derivative works, art objects re-used, etc. On the other hand, they probably shouldn't need to consult me every time there is a minor content change for their clients.

Just curious as to what everyone's thoughts on the matter and general practices are... sort of an informal survey.

Very curious to hear your experiences,

Paul

Best Practices For Flash Detection
I have a full-flash site I am about to launch that I need to come up with a strategy for on how to bring people into it. The site does not require full-screen or a popup launcher however, it seems like bad form to just throw someone the site without a warning of some kind. Also, I find that some of the auto-redirectors are a little heavy handed and prevent some other users getting into the site so, I prefer not to go that way unless it is bullet-proof.

What do you prefer to do? I am leaning to an entry page - any reasons against it?

-mx

Best Flash Website Practices
Hi there,

I'm creating a flash website of my portfolio and, even though I am not very good with AS, and I'm probably over complicating my life the way I'm doing it, I would also know which is the best/most usable way of creating a Flash website.
What I mean is, I was taught to do the browsing through scenes, but I read somewhere that that's not a very good practice.
So I thought of creating each .swf separately and calling it through a loadMovie, but I got stuck when it goes in the movie, to call back another .swf (meaning, the different sections of the site that are browsed through with the menu buttons).

Does anyone know which would be the best way to set up the flash website?

Thanks,

N.

Best Practices - Resizing Flash Project
I've always wondered if there is a better way to do this. I'm working on a project that will eventually be included on a webpage. After a redesign of the webpage I realize the flash file needs to be resized to fit. However just going in and changing the file's width and height stretches out the content.

My solution in the past has been to create a new file from scratch and just copy and paste timeline, scripts and library into the new file. But this would be impractical for complex files. Is there a way to get flash to resize the document without stretching everything? I would like it to just add extra canvas the way photoshop does when you adjust the canvas size.

Possible?

Hosting Best Practices- Flash Presentation
Hi

I am working on a project for a client that will create a flash presentation using Articulate that will be, with all of the swf's , myp3's and video file, will be 2.5 MB.

The presentation may be viewe by up to 1, 000 people, most likely not simultaneously. I am trying to find an appropriate host and have the following options:

1.) There are several companies out there that say they specialize in hosting flash, but don't have the flash media server. THey use shared servers.

2.) Install on a Dedicated Server

3.) Host with a provider of Flash Media Server....

I was wondering what would best practices for hosting this. Thanks in advance for your help

Dave

Full Browser Flash - Best Practices?
hey all!,

just wondering what would be the best practices for full browser flash "example@kirupasiteoftheweek" something along those lines i have an idea where you have to centre your stage etc...but how large should you make the stage size and your bg or say photoshop files what dimensions should they be??

Also if anyone knows of any good tutorials on it please give us a shout

cheers in advance peeps

Flash Best Practices - Structure Newbie
Delurking, first time post--I've been reading through the forums, but I can't find my answer, so if someone has a link because I'm blind, that's excellent too!

I'm trying to write a portfolio gallery, and I'm uncertain what the best way to optimize user experience is. I'd just like a series of images, and when the user clicks the image or a button, to progress to the next image. Some descriptive text will be available below the image.

Now, is it faster to put everything in the timeline? To load external .swfs? To externally load even the images in those swfs? For the text handling, is it better to pass out some external variable and just use HTML? Should I learn XML and use that instead?

We're using MX 2004. I've tried to ask this sort of question in class, but the teacher is a little hostile and just keeps saying "There is no right way". Which, fine, but I've experienced enough bad flash sites to not want to contribute to more!

Thanks in advance for helping a newbie out.

Best Practices - Flash Image Carousel
When creating an image Carousel in flash for a web page, what are the best practices for loading quickly and changing images?

So for instance, on an ecommerce site, the home page often has a block created in flash in which 4-6 images are included with arrows or image numbers are displayed at the bottom as buttons. The images automatically change to the next ever x seconds unless the user selects an image number or the forward/back arrows.

Obviously, smaller the image the better. But how about best practices for things like:

Do you include one image in the block and then load dynamically the other images? Should all images be dynamically loaded if you want to change them on a daily/weekly basis? Any suggestions for making sure the images, especially the first one is loaded quickly?

Anyone have sample ~gpl code that demonstrates a block like this?

Two examples - kohls.com, jcrew.com

Best Practices For Detecting The Flash 8 Player?
I'm looking for any information or guidance regarding best practices for detecting the flash 8 player.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Exception Handling In Flash - Best Practices?
I have just completed a massive project with over 40,000 lines of
actionscript 3 and I realise I didnt use try{}catch{} anywhere...now
this seems pretty bad, but....

I used addEventListener to catch for errors when dealing with errors
with external data (file loads, remoting calls, url requests etc..)
and I used logic for any null pointer type exceptions that occured
during development, e.g.

if(movieclipInstance != null && movieClipInstance is MovieClip &&
movieClipInstance.parameter == thing)
{
//process stuff with movieclipInstance here

}

Stuff i've been reading says its takes more resources to catch
exceptions than to logic them out or use event listeners, and articles
about exception handling for other languages e.g. c# never seem
relevant enough for Flash.

So I am wondering what approaches other actionscripters use when
dealing with exceptions ... and where might be a good place to use try
{}catch{}

Best Practices For Architecture Of Flash Site?
hey there,

So I've done a lot of tutorials and have tried to mostly learn about actionscript - and Im ready to make two sites.

One is more traditional, with a constant navigation bar, and one is non traditional with constantly changing buttons, and sometimes quicktime movie interludes between the scenes.

My question is, how would people suggest that I setup the above two? for navigation bar style sites, are slides the way to go?(is that what everone does, or do people use the visible/invisible a lot...) I am trying to avoid the gotoAndPlay for navigation (which I think is standard practice?)

The second one I'm not really sure how I want to do it, cause buttons that will pop up everywhere will not be constant in where they take you.

Any sort of short summary of what people actually do would be severly appreciated, as I dont know where to start to put in my time and energy.

AS 2 PSP Flash Development Anyone?
I own a PSP, and I was an user on PSU (Playstation forum). You know about PSP Portals? Flash applications designed for the PSP. Here is a nice examples:

- PSPfVista beta 3
You can download it here, but not sure if it works on PC

Does someone here own a PSP? it would be nice to make my portals here instead of a Playstation forum.

Btw Hai this is my first thread!

Flash Cd-rom Development
I've been ask if flash can insert into and extrat data out of a database on the users hard drive via odbc?

can this be done, it not a web app a cd-rom project

jef

Flash AIR Development
I have been looking high and low for a good example of the SQlite integration in the Flash AIR API. I am able to get my db read into the app, confirm that with trace(). I can not howerver do anything with the data...I would love to simply display the array on the stage in a datagrid. Any help or resource online would be great. thanks in advance.

Code:

import flash.data.SQLConnection;
import flash.data.SQLResult;
import flash.data.SQLStatement;
import flash.data.SQLMode;
import flash.events.SQLErrorEvent;
import flash.events.SQLEvent;
import flash.filesystem.File;

var conn:SQLConnection = new SQLConnection();

var dbFile:File = File.applicationDirectory.resolvePath("Playbook.db");

try
{
conn.open(dbFile, SQLMode.UPDATE);
trace("the database opened successfully");
}
catch (error:SQLError)
{
trace("Error message:", error.message);
trace("Details:", error.details);
}

// create the SQL statement
var selectStmt:SQLStatement = new SQLStatement();
selectStmt.sqlConnection = conn;

// define the SQL text
var sql:String =
"SELECT ID, inst_title, inst_desc " +
"FROM install";
selectStmt.text = sql;

try
{
selectStmt.execute();

var result = selectStmt.getResult();
var numResults = result.data.length;

for (var i = 0; i < numResults; i++)
{
var row = result.data[i];
var output = "ID: " + row.ID;
output += "; inst_title: " + row.inst_title;
output += "; inst_desc: " + row.inst_desc;
trace(output);
}
}
catch (error)
{
// Information about the error is available in the
// error variable, which is an instance of
// the SQLError class.
}

Flash Development In Cellphones...
how do you get a flash movie to work in a cellphone? I tried accessing some flash content from my phone and it doesn't work.

Touchscreen Development In Flash
Good day!

Traditionally touchscreen applications are developed in Director. We would like to start doing the development in Flash.

Is anyone aware of any impending issues that Flash might have?

Thanks!
Rob

Web Page Development In Flash MX
I am an intermediate level user of Dreamweaver MX. I hear a lot about websites developed in Flash a lot of pro's & con's about it. Inspite of searching the Macromedia site & various forums I have not come across any tutorial / manuals / books / documentation on this particular aspect. Is the website first developed in Dreamweaver and then exported to flash ? or developed in Flash in situ ????? ---- HELP.

Flash As A Web Development Tool.
Am I right in thinking that not many people currently use Flash solely as the source for developing sites?

Although Flash has all the capabilities for a great development tool – Database integration, XML support etc. I hardly ever come across a site that has been constructed just with Flash.

I know there are issues around search engine recognition, but am I barking up the wrong tree in believing that my studying the application will enable me to construct complete sites with the app. or is it more a question of Flash being used as maybe the animated component of a site constructed by other means?

Any views please.

Flash Development Toolkit
Hello

I am a multimedia designer working for a company. I currently use Flash and the company wants to go down the route of using a software development tool, that has ease of use, so that all trainers can build their own e-learning material, and were thinking of using Atlantic Link's Content Point. Does anyone have any experience of such software which claims to do everything Flash does in a much quicker time? If so which one would you recommend? What are the true advantages and disadvantages of using such software?

Thanks

Flash Development Server
Hello,

I just want to know one thing. do i need a webserver other than flash media server to play my streaming video.

I installed flash development server and using flash media encoder created the streaming video. Then uploaded the html and swf files to the server.

Its working fine on my local system. But when i am trying from other machine its not working.

Can you tell me how can I see my streaming video online.
thank you

Flash Development Program
Can someone recommend me a free Flash Development program?

Flash Games Development
Hi

We need to develop some high graphics game in Flash. We have coders well versed with Actionscripting however we have not much of experience with game development. We have a query for the game development

Does it make any impact on game performance if we develop it basis on the classes or we develop it using the actionscripting inside the FLA?

We know the class base development will save our a lot of time but not sure if this is best practice for game development.

Any help will be appreciated.

Regards
Rohit - www.wintechmedia.com

Edited: 11/18/2006 at 09:36:05 AM by wintechmedia

Flash Program Development
Hi,

I'm looking for Flash Professionals to complete a project within 3 months. This project includes developing accurate ways to layout complex graphing problems. If you are interested please contact me with resume and/or portfolio.

Thanks,
Jon Ericksen
Project Manager
jone@orbitonline.com

Flash Development On Linux OS
I am building a Linux OS supported system. The only application that I can not find a replacement for is Flash. I can find applications that let you build SWF products but none of them will allow the advanced features that Flash does (like external actionscript files). Is there a version of Flash (minimum of version 5) that I can run on a Linux machine?

Flash Game Development
I am planning developing Flash Games for a cell phone. If I post them to my website can people play them on their mobile web browser? Is it in Flash or Flash Lite? Or do people have to somehow download the game to their hpone to play? Thanks.

Flash And Database Development
I am in the beginning stage's of building my website... I am planning to use an access database- whereby new entries are made and they would then be updated to the ISP... how would I link the Access database up with my flash site so it would show the new and existing entrie's... please advise or point me in the direction of a tutorial I can review...

Also on a separate matter - how would I make a login and password screen to access the next page of my Flash movie- to have access to the database record's...

Flash Development Tool
Hey all,
i am thinking about using a flash development software and i am wandering what is the difference between these three:
1. Flex
2. FDT
3. Flash Devloper

I know that flash developer only works in pc but i heard it has some better features over fdt. (i use both mac and pc but prefer mac) All i know about flex is that it is for Rich application development. I also looked up the prices on these and they are expensive. Do you developers buy these or download from bit torrent?

Thanks, in advance

Flash Development Question
Hi all,
I'm new to flash and am working on designing a magazine/newspaper site where every week everything will be updated...
My question is, what is the norm for this? Is everything developed in flash or just the buttons/menus? Is there a way to have a template where you just use include files for the new material?
I am using Studio MX and am completely new to it all, but have a background programming in many other languages...any advice appreciated.

VOIP Development In Flash?
Is this at all possible? Can anyone suggest a good tut? Has anyone seen an example?

Thanks,

Aries.

Cheapest Flash Development Kit
I want to start learning to write Flash. What are the basic pieces I need to get started on this - assuming I want to stick with actual, official, supported components and not something some hacker cooked up over his kitchen sink) and how cheaply can I get away with it?

While I'm learning this stuff I'll be hosting my little experiments on a shared server on HostMySite.com - what do I need to make sure they have/support/provide to do that?

Thanks in advance.

Question / Flash Development
OK, so, my 10-year old son is totally enthralled by some of the Flash animations he sees online, like the ones at www.spinnerdisc.com. It's to the point where he's building flash-like animations using complicated PowerPoint presentations.

So, a few questions:

1. What tools do you need in order to do very basic Flash programming?

2. How realistic is it that a 10-year old smart kid (but not a prodigy) could actually DO something with Flash?

Thanks very much!

Steve

FLASH WEB DEVELOPMENT / MANAGEMENT
Hi there

could anyone point me in the right direction of a web development / management company in the UK.

the site that is currently being designed is to a high standard, but i am in need a of a company that can integrate all the back end (forum, ecommerce etc) into a flash site.

If anyone has any idea of a relieable company that can develop and manage such sites it would be much appreciated

thanks

j

Top Flash Development Firms?
Hello:

I'm looking to find out who the top Flash design/development firms are in the U.S.

Examples are:

2advanced.com
fantasy-interactive.com

Any ideas?

Thanks! -Deanna

Flash Game Development
Hey Guys

I will keep this short and to the point.

I am developing a portal site at the minute that is a hybrid of flash and html/css.

I want to include some flash based games like crossword games or word/number puzzle games etc.

I have never really developed anything like this before so I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction, either by recommending a good book or website that will get me started with some good examples!

Thanks in advance!

Streamer

Flash Mobile Development
Is anyone creating or has created a Flash Mobile Device with support from a MySQL?

It seems there is little consideration for Mobile Development on and wondered whether I just haven't seen it yet.

If anyone has any tutorials or links please get back to me!

Thanks

Mobile Flash Development
hello,

not sure if this is the right place for this topic, but i am wondering if any of you have some good resources on mobile flash development? i know there are a whole different host of issues when developing for phones (especially memory management) and am looking for good resources to read up on that.

thank you!

Using Eclipse For Flash Development
I have come across several articles about people using Eclipse with the ASDT plugin to write actionscript. I went ahead and downloaded the and installed the plugin, and it seems that I can create actionscript files ans swfs(I took a basic tutorial).

I have been studying flash for the past week or so, and I a bit confused on how actionascript ties in with the movie. I guess coming from a programming background, I'm looking for some overall super classes and such so that I really don't have to use the Adobe Suite - I like Eclipse.

I'm guessing I'm looking for how to tie my code into keyframes and such without having to Flash8 from Adobe. Can someone help me out here?

Shouldn't I be able to create a whole flash movie - from top to bottom - simply from actionscript alone? I haven't been able to answer this question and I've been Google'ing for days for the tutorial that's going to answer it for me.