Re: FLASH: Wierd Flash quirks

[flashy junior]

>Hi everyone,

>

>I just got done with building an emulator for the PalmV and CE device in

>Flash. We used the software that was supplied by the client and did screen

>shots of the different interactive button states, then sliced them into 

>gifs

>for import into Flash4. Anyway.. I found it to be an extremely frustrating

>and somewhat odd experience trying to get the graphics to stay aligned in

>the Flash environment. The project didn't call for any motion graphics so 

>we

>just laid out each screen into individual frames then created the button

>states in a layer over the background screen shots. Getting to the specific

>problems... When I would try to align a graphic over the top of the

>background screen.. I couldn't get it to match pixel for pixel unless I

>zoomed in to maximum... then when I zoomed back out, sometimes they 

>wouldn't

>stay in alignment. It got worse when I converted them to buttons. I would

>align the graphic, hit F8 and make my button. So far so good. Test in the

>timeline and sometimes they would stay lined up...other times not. Then to

>make things even stranger... I would get perfect alignment in the 

>timeline..

>but when I tested the movie..the button graphics would shift one pixel up 

>or

>down. If the button jumped down one pixel.. I would go back to the timeline

>and bump the instance up one pixel then test the movie and check the 

>button.

>Guess what... it was now jumping one pixel the opposite direction...or just

>distorting the graphic. What made it even stranger was that it wouldn't do

>it consistently.... it I had 4 buttons on a page, maybe half of them would

>work perfect..the others would be corrupted. I tried redoing the graphics,

>plus testing on different machines and that didn't help.

>

>Another problem... we used a JPEG graphic of the handheld in a background

>and made the screen shots that appeared in the device window in a layer

>above that. After the build was complete we noticed that when manually

>clicking through frame by frame that the background image was getting

>distorted. If we click on the frame it would pop back into shape.. but when

>we toggled the frame, it would distort again....whereas it would shift a

>section of the image one or two pixels. Switching out the JPEG for a GIF

>file solved the problem.... but why did it occur in the first place?

>

>I also had lots of trouble importing certain images into Flash without

>losing a few pixels along the way. For example.. I had a simple dialog box

>that had a logo element on a white background with a one pixel wide black

>border around the outside edge. When I imported the graphic into Flash.. I

>lost the bottom right side of the black border at view 100%... but zoom in

>and the border was still there, yet when I published the movie...the border

>was gone. I finally had to create the missing border in Flash to get it to

>show up.

>

>There is more... but this message is getting long and I think you get the

>point. I suppose that doing everything as vectors would have solved the

>problem but we didn't have the luxury of redoing all the graphics in that

>format. We also wanted to duplicate the interface as best as possible and

>that meant using bitmapped screenshots.

>

>If anyone can shed some light on what they think is going on.. I'd greatly

>appreciate the insight. We are moving into the second phase of the project

>and I hate having to fight my way through it. It totally sucks spending a

>half hour tweaking alignment only to have it distort on output.

>

>Thanks for reading...and any advice you can throw my way!

>

>Alan

>

>W I L S O N - I N T E R A C T I V E

>http://www.wilson-interactive.com

>=================================

>Every noble work is at first impossible.

>                          -- Thomas Carlyle

>


I recently worked on a project that involved using a lot of jpegs and I 

experienced many of the problems you mention. I grinned and bared it... I 

thought I'd message back to let you know that you're not the only one who 

has encountered this sort of wierdness. Flash 5 is out and I'd hope that 

these problems have been ironed out with the new version - maybe a 

Macromedia rep can shed a bit more light on the subject as to whether there 

is something we are doing wrong or what?


Flashy

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