Christmas eCard, part I - Composing

Falling behind with your Christmas cards routine? Afraid your cards won’t make it in time through the jam-packed Post Office? No worries! After all it is 21^st century – the time of tiny cell phones and electronic mail as our main communication tools.  So why not an eCard? Get creative with your digital camera and put together something fancy in a matter of minutes.

That’s what we’ll build in this two-part series – an eCard card application, and we we’ll do it in Flash.

You will be able to use it for yourself or, to attract more traffic, offer it to your web site visitors as a free service.

A user will be able to pick an e-Card from the available selection, change the text and the color of the greeting and type the message. The recipient will receive an email with the link to the page where this personalized card can be viewed. To accommodate for this features we will build an image browser and a color picker widget.

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Uploading and downloading files with Flash 8

One of the great new features of Flash is its ability to let you work with file uploads and downloads. However, let me say right at the beginning of this article that Flash 8 CAN’T upload files on its own - it needs some help from the server. The topic of this article is how we can use Flash to communicate the information about uploaded and downloaded files with the server.

On HTML pages, one of the form controls that is included is an input control with a type of File.

This creates a field with a Browse button that looks something like the image shown below.  

You can download the files referred to in the tutorial from the blue Properties box that contains the article PDF. There's a heading titled Code Download and you can click the Details link next to it to get the zip file. Read More

Working with Bitmaps in Flash 8 - part 2

If you completed part 1 of this article series, you’ll have learned about the BitmapData class. I showed you how to create a BitmapData object and we worked with it in different ways: displaying it within a movie clip, creating noise and using floodFill. Remember, that the Flash Player doesn’t redraw bitmaps each frame as it does with vector images.

In this article I’ll look at:

• Working with pixels
• Using the draw method
• Applying filters to BitmapData objects

We’ll work with several examples and even create a simple application that samples colours from a photo. You’ll need to have completed part 1 of the article before you tackle part 2 as it explains a lot of the background behind the code we’ll be using here. Note that there are other methods of the BitmapData object that I won’t cover in either of the two articles.

You’ll need a copy of Flash 8 to work through this article. You can download a trial copy from the Macromedia Web site. Note that the code samples within the article all use AS2.0.

You can download the files referred to in the tutorial from the blue Properties box that contains the article PDF. There's a heading titled Code Download and you can click the Details link next to it to get the zip file.

We’ll start by looking at how you can work with individual pixels.

This article is part of the new interactive e-book; Out of my mind: Flash 8 Power

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Working with Bitmaps in Flash 8 - part 1

Flash 8 includes a new class: flash.display.BitmapData that lets you work with bitmap information.  When you work with bitmaps in Flash, the Flash Player doesn’t have to redraw the image each frame so there’s less overhead.

You can create bitmaps using ActionScript, add colours, apply filters and apply many types of manipulations. You can also use a BitmapData object to fill a movie clip. You may have seen this in an earlier example.

This is the first of two articles about the BitmapData class. In this article I’ll look at:

• creating a BitmapData object
• attaching a BitmapData object to a movie clip
• creating noise in a BitmapData object
• modifying a BitmapData object

In the examples, I’ll show you how to create realistic looking TV static and you’ll also learn how to create repeating patterns in a BitmapData object. Our final example will show you how to fill a movie clip with colour like you would with the in Paint Bucket tool.

Part 2 of this article will show you some more tricks with the BitmapData class including:

• Working with individual pixels
• Using the draw method to turn a movie clip into a bitmap
• Applying filters to BitmapData objects

You’ll need a copy of Flash 8 to work through this article as well as the Flash 8 Player. You can download a trial copy from the Macromedia Web site. Note that the code samples within the article all use AS2.0.

You can download the files referred to in the tutorial from the blue Properties box that contains the article PDF. There's a heading titled Code Download and you can click the Details link next to it to get the zip file.

This article is part of the new interactive e-book; Out of my mind: Flash 8 Power

Read More