Creating a web poll in Flash MX 2004 part 4

Welcome to the last tutorial in this series on Creating a web poll in Flash MX 2004. The tutorials have worked with a simple Web poll application. We started by looking at how we could use various data sources for our application – text and XML files and a database. We used functions written in AS2.0 to populate the application, record the vote and display a chart of all responses.

In the third tutorial we created two custom classes for our Web poll application. By the end of that tutorial, we had populated the application with information from a database. This tutorial extends the classes to record the vote and display a simple chart of responses.

As with the last tutorial, you'll need some kind of web server and a server-side language like PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP or ASP.NET. The examples in this tutorial use VB.NET, as I'm an ASP.NET developer. My own computer is set up to use IIS 5 as the Web server and it has the .NET 1.1 framework installed.

You can download the files for this 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. It contains the source files you'll need for the tutorial as well as the completed files.

You can either start with the class files from the previous tutorial - Poll.as and PollResponse.as – or use the files provided in the resources zip file. Open these files in Flash as well as the file pollclasses2.fla. Just make sure you don't use the files from the completed folder.

Copy all the files to your Web server – in my case, I created a folder called poll in Inetpub >wwwroot. Open and test the file pollclasses2.fla and you should see the interface populated from the database.

Read More

Creating a Web Poll in Flash MX 2004: Pt. 3

In part one of this series, we created a simple web poll application. The poll displayed a question and responses taken from an external source – either a text file, XML file or database.  In part two, we recorded the vote and displayed a simple chart. We also looked at how the results could be updated. In these two parts, we based our code on functions written in AS2.0.

In the final tutorials in this series, we are going to create the application but this time, we'll use classes in ActionScript 2.0. So, if you're looking to get started in this area, look no further than this tutorial and the one following! We'll use the same web poll application but to simplify things, we'll focus on using an Access database to provide the content.

Creating your own classes is a great approach to writing code in ActionScript. It allows you to create blocks of code that you can easily reuse throughout your work. If you work in a team, it also allows designers and developers to work separately on the same Flash project.

For this tutorial, you'll need some kind of web server and a server-side language like PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP or ASP.NET. Because I'm an ASP developer, the examples in this tutorial use VB.NET. My own computer is set up to use IIS 5 as the Web server and it has the .NET 1.1 framework installed.

You can download the files for this 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. It contains the source files you'll need for the tutorial as well as the completed files.

Read More

Creating a Web Poll in Flash MX 2004: Pt. 2

In the first part of this tutorial, we looked at how you could create a simple web poll application. The poll displays a question and a list of radio buttons containing responses. The user selects a response, votes and then views a simple chart showing all responses. The content for the web poll is taken from an external source and, in part one, we looked at the different sources available to Flash - a text file, an XML file and a database.

The first part of the tutorial covered the LoadVars and XML classes and we added radio buttons to our Flash movie dynamically. I've assumed that you've completed this tutorial. If not, you might find it useful to complete it first.

In this tutorial, we'll collect the user's vote and display a simple chart. We'll also update the results in the text file, XML file and database. You'll learn techniques to add movie clips and text files dynamically as well as using the LoadVars class to update the data sources.

By the end of the last tutorial, we had created three Flash files that loaded external content, one each for a text file, XML file and database. When you have finished this tutorial, you'll be able to display a chart and update each of these data sources.

Please note if you want to work with a database or update the poll results, you'll need some kind of web server and a server-side language like PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP or ASP.NET. Because I'm an ASP.NET developer, this part of the tutorial will use ASP.NET, IIS 5 with .NET, and Access for the back-end.

All the source code is available for download.

Read More

Creating a Web Poll in Flash MX 2004: Pt. I

In this series of tutorials, we're going to create a very basic poll application in Flash MX 2004. The poll will ask a question and show a list of radio buttons containing responses. The user will select a response, vote and then view a simple chart showing all the responses received so far. This application could be useful for an Intranet or even a web site.

We'll want to ask new poll questions from time to time so we'll read in the poll details from an external source. We could use a text file, an XML file or a database to store the information. Using one of these sources means that we won't have to open the Flash file and republish it each time we change the question. We can just update the source and the Flash movie will update automatically.

This first tutorial will look at how you could load content from all three sources and is written for ActionScript 2.0. We'll build functions to read in the poll details and display them in a Flash movie. We'll add radio buttons to the stage dynamically.

Part two of the tutorial will deal with collecting the vote, displaying a simple chart and updating the results, while the third part of the tutorial will recreate the poll application using the new AS 2.0 classes and will provide a great introduction to working with classes in Flash MX 2004.

Please note if you want to work with a database or update the poll results, you'll need some kind of web server and a server-side language like PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP or ASP.NET. Because I'm an ASP.NET developer, this part of the tutorial will use ASP.NET, IIS 5 with .NET, and Access for the back-end.

All the source code is available for download.

Read More

Developing Flash/Database Interaction using Dreamweaver. Pt IV: Creating and Deleting Records

This is the last article in the series on developing Flash database-driven applications using Dreamweaver. Over the course of the articles we've been working on a simple user management application involving Flash on the front-end and PHP/MySQL on the back-end.

So far we have built a basic Flash interface (we've been concentrating mostly on the ActionScript code driving it rather than the aesthetics) and implemented some common web application functions.

In the first article we created a basic authentication mechanism, while in the second we built a protected page that extracted information from the database. Last week we expanded the functionality a bit further and added an update mechanism to the application.

All the way through the series we've been using Dreamweaver MX 2004 to do the hard coding work and have created a set of "Flash services" – web pages with server-side code which facilitate communication between our Flash interface and our database.

The subject of today's article is the enhancement of our application by adding the functionality that is obviously missing from our application – the ability to create and delete records.

All the Flash and PHP source code for the series is available for download.

 

Read More

Creating a PowerPoint Style Presentation in Flash: Pt. 2

This tutorial picks up from Creating a PowerPoint Style Presentation in Flash: Pt.I where we looked at enhancing a presentation created from a template within Flash. In that first tutorial, we started with one of the 'out-of-the-box' presentation templates that comes with Flash and enhanced it with rewind and fast forward buttons, a slide counter and a progress bar to improve the user (and viewer experience).

In this tutorial, we'll work with keyboard shortcuts and save our own presentation template.  We'll also create a kiosk-style presentation that runs automatically using the setInterval action.

This tutorial assumes you understand basic ActionScript commands and are comfortable adding them to movies. Although this tutorial follows on from the first one, this tutorial comes with a complete code download.

Read More