Flash Links

[proton32060]

I am into my second reading of Flash, however I have a question.

If you are using a Flash navigation Banner with links to other pages within the site, can these links be Relative Links within the site or must they be Absolute?

Everything I am reading refers only to absolute addresses for the various url links in Flash.

The biggest problem in learning by yourself with a book is there is no one to ask any questions. And if the book fails to explain it clearly, you are stuck.

Also, must shared Libraries be absolute or can they be relative also?


I am reading the book and am figuring out most of it myself. But there is no clear answer to this.

Thanks.

[orlanime]

Maybe you should also experiment with Flash as well as reading the book. Go back and forth, play around with it.

[Webforumz Staff]

Links can be relative or absolute... the links are passed to the browser just like a hyperlink.

As for shared libraries.... these only exist on your computer - They are not published on the net.

[proton32060]

Thanks Guys,

I have been playing around with it a lot and have actually created her Flash intro. It looks pretty good ( I think), considering my lack of experience.

The link question is primarily due to the Flash Banner I intend to use for her site. The Site Link Buttons will be on the Banner and will have to change as each section of the site is entered.

The reason I asked about Shared Libraries is the Banner has a fairly large bitmap as the background. Once it is loaded only the link titles and url’s will change from one page to the next. The idea was not to reload the whole banner each time someone changed pages.

The book does mention shared libraries as a separate file on the server which contains various components a number of movies may contain.
When a movie is downloaded, the browser can download and cache the shared library so new movies can pull from it instead of downloading the same elements over and over again. But the book did not go into very much detail at all.

I realize that the button titles and links will be changed on the banner with Dynamic text linking to an external text file.

My problem is it seems that each page will need a unique banner name so you can program the individual buttons to a different text file. But if I was going to do all that, and the banner had to be downloaded each time anyway, it seems I might as well just create a new banner with different buttons and links for each page.

This site already has around fifty pages so this is not a small problem I am dealing with.


I still have 300 pages left of the Flash MX Bible and it is now dealing solely with action script. But it has not even hinted at how to do this. In fact, the whole book has devoted maybe five pages to links and nothing about updating them dynamically.
Maybe it will be in the last 300 pages.

The biggest problem with a book is it can not tell you “ Read This” to get a particular thing done. All you can do is read it cover to cover and hope you get an understanding along the way.

If it does not explain it, I guess I will go buy another book.

[Webforumz Staff]

Oh right I see what you mean about "Shared libraries" now. Yes, you can put the image in a seperate file (or if the image is a JPG you can just import the JPG by itself - it doesn't need to be in a flash file) and it should go into the cache and be used again.
I thought you were referring to sharing libraries across FLA files, which is something completly different and doesn't end up in the finished published files.

As for your banner's button problems - You can put code into the HTML which flash can act on. In your embed code you have:

Code: Select all

<param name="Flashvars" value="&variable1=value&variable2=value">
<EMBED src="" WIDTH="... 
...
flashvars="&variable1=value&variable2=value"></embed>

(that is, you have to have it twice, both as a param and in the embed tag)
Those variables will then be accesible in flash directly.

So if you get a textfield and set it to dynamic and give it a variable name of "variable1", then it will have "value" or whatever else you want to put in the source. You could also do some basic actionscript to do this. For instance:
getURL(variable1);
on a button, would get the url of "value". Obviously, if you replace value in the code above with a hyperlink, then you get that hyperlink.
So you could have &button1=home.html&button2=news.html ... etc and use those variables in getURL.

You can also put those variables in a seperate file, but seeing as you want each page to have it's own links, this method, of embedding the flashvars into the HTML code, seems better.

[proton32060]

Sirkent,

I really appreciate you help.

To answer your question from another Post on how far I want to go with my Web Learning.

I want to know it all.

I really love this stuff to work this hard to learn it all. But this is a lot to absorb and try to retain all at the same time. I have never understood programming and have managed to avoid it all these years, so all of this is totally new to me.

If all of this was available as a College degree, I would have gone and taken it. But at this point she needs her site sooner than that.

The idea was not to change every button on each page, but to eliminate or replace the button when they are on that particular page. As far as inserting the variables into the HTML, I was not aware you could do that.

Does anyone know of a book that is in a “ If you want to do this, then this is how you do it” type of format.?

I can learn that way, but what I am reading has spent hundreds of pages on operators, else…if statements, etc. But never really say how you would use any of it in any practical fashion.

I am surprised this book never mentioned how to dynamically update buttons on a web page. I would imagine that is the most basic requirement you would need.

[benbacardi]

Sams are usually quite good eg Sams Teach Yourself Macromedia Flash MX in 24 Hours etc...

[proton32060]

Sirkent,

Thanks for the input.


I will be honest with you. I understand in concept what you are saying. I have been messing around with a Web Template I got and it calls for variables located in a text file in the directory of the Flash Banner.
Playing with that taught me more than the book ever did. But incorporating that into a Web Page is beyond my comprehension at this point.

I did check out the Sam's Book, however it dealt almost exclusively with animation aspects and almost nothing on action script. I can do the animation and have a good understanding of that aspect of the program. It is the programming part I am suffering with.

Most of these books I have read, including the Flash book, goes on for hundreds of pages about syntax, operators, functions, etc. But it will completely lose someone who knows nothing about programming.
A book of examples of “ This- Does This” would teach a lot more than straight definitions. Which is probably why I learned more from the template than from the book.

You might be able to explain in greater detail how to put the variables in a Web Page, but I will still not understand what I am doing. So I will still be back crying for help all over again on something else.

There is no way any of you can teach me the basics of programming over a Discussion Board.

But you can tell me where to start to at least comprehend what I am reading.
Once I do that I can figure it out myself.

So would I be better off reading basic books on actionscript and working my way up from there or would learning javascript from a beginner on up be easier?

I know enough at this point to know the two are very similar, the problem is all of these books are assuming a given amount of familiarity with programming to begin with. They all start out talking about C+ and Perl and Regular java in the first paragraph and the differences between them. That's great if you know something about those other languages. But if you don't, you are already a goner before you get off the first page.

I feel very much like someone in a calculus course who hasn’t even learned algebra yet.

So give me an idea where to start- how do you get the basics?

If I can get a basic understanding of this, I can do it myself.

The thing that amazes me the most is the thousands of pages I have already read and how little I really know.

I am hoping that once I learn Flash, and more importantly Action Script, that the rest will come a lot easier. All of these topics, CSS, SSI, and a host of others you guys use in your work , seem to be interrelated in that if you comprehend one, you will have a head start on the others.

At least it appears that way to someone who really doesn’t know anything.

[Webforumz Staff]

Checkout http://www.webforumz.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=454
Made a while back by our very own Gwx03... should help.

If you need a hand with any of the definitions, then let me know.