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Subject:	Re: FLASH: dissecting fla files
From:	Marc Hoffman, Poison Dart Frog Media
Date:	Thu, 2 Mar 2000 18:29:41 GMT

At 08:31 AM 3/2/00 , you wrote:

>Does anyone have any good suggestions or utilities to use to document
>the contents of a fla file? I spent a couple hours yesterday going over
>the very clever but very complicated listbox example from Pipey's site,
>looking at (and documenting) the base objects first and working up to
>the highest level objects (lots of mc's inside other mc's, etc). The
>file is organized beautifully, with objects in appropriate folders and
>lots of empty frames so labels show up clearly, and yet I had a hard
>time gathering all the info into a logical collection. I'm not
>complaining about the time spent (as a programmer, I actually like
>digging around in someone else's code, especially when it's so well
>done)--just wondered if there are any tried-n-true ways people have
>found to organize/document flash projects that involve a lot of
>actionscript.
>
>Thanks for any ideas,
>Helen

Not that I know of. I've always relied on carefully labeled layers,
comments in the timelines (rather than labels, which get exported to .swf),
and text narratives that I write myself. I know that's less than ideal, and
it would be great to have a better tool, especially with ActionScript
becoming a bigger part of Flash movies.

It almost seems a flowchart is needed, or at least an outline (which most
word processors easily create and edit). I hope someone else will have
other ideas, or even the incentive to develop a tool.

Marc Hoffman

Poison Dart Frog Media: Specializing in Flash Animation and Digital Audio
Production
Our latest Flash job is on display at <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/rickfrnd>
See our Flash portfolio at <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/portfolio>
(featured in Flash 3 Web Animation, by Ken Milburn)

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