Re: FLASH: flash 5 scale question

[Mike S]

At 10:53 AM 8/3/2000 -0700, you wrote:

>>> can you set it where the area scales but the elements do not (similar

to the

>>> way frames can resize in html)?

>> 

>> .... but you can create this behavior progromatically with scripting.

>

>Can you point me to a tutorial. This is my biggest fault with Flash - in

>fact the only reason I would use html (except that it's easily updateable).


Unfortunately I can't point you at any tutorials yet, however, it should be

possible in Flash 4 to still perform the illusion your looking for. The

action script

is pretty strait forward, if a bit messy. You'll need to perform some

simple rectangle mathdetermine the positions.


To create the illusion that a movie clip contains many little objects that

"flow" within in it you need to create an artifical layout system wherein

when ever the "parent" movie clip changes size/shape it recalculates the

positions of all it's "children" based on the new size/shape. Note that the

"children" are not actually inside the parent clip, this would cause

scaling whenever the parent resized. The children float above their parent.


For example: To create the behavior of a child tracking to the right hand

side (<foo align=right></foo>) of a parent clip just set the xpos to equal

the parents right edge minus the childs width.


If your trying to adjust positions and behaviors based on the size of the

flash plugin in the browser (a little harder...) then you have to use

javascript to report the plugin size as it changes. I've put a little

example of this up on my website. The example is at

http://www.onceuponatime.org/flash/Scaler.html and the source is at

http://www.onceuponatime.org/flash/Scaler.zip


Notice how the red ball stays the same, but the rest of the clip scales

when the browser window is resized. I'll leave positioning up to you ;)

Note that this may not work in Netscape....


--mikes


------------------

Michael S.

Sr. Software Engineer

Excite@Home


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