Creating a Tool tip Movie Clip

Tool tips are a useful feature of most software applications. They display messages to users for navigation purposes or to indicate functionality. Whenever you use Flash, you’ll see a tool tip when you point at an icon in the Toolbox.

In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to make a tool tip movie clip that you can reuse in your Flash applications. You’ll be able to change the text and the tool tip background colour. The tool tip will appear when you move your mouse over an instance on the Stage. It will follow the position of the mouse and will disappear when you remove the mouse. You’ll be able to have different tool tips for each instance and the tool tips will automatically resize themselves depending on the text that you assign.

I’ve used ActionScript 1.0 for the code in this tutorial so you’ll need at least Flash MX to complete it. I’ve assumed that you’ve got some experience at working with ActionScript and that you know how to add code in the Actions panel. I’ll cover how you might achieve the same functionality with AS 2.0 classes in a later article.

You can download the resource files 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.

We’ll need to create a symbol in the Library and write some ActionScript to generate the tool tip. We’ll get started by creating the Library symbol. It will be a movie clip that includes a text field for the tool tip text.

What is New in ActionScript in Flash 8

What’s New in ActionScript in Flash 8

If you’ve been reading through the first two articles in this series, you’ll have seen the new features and changes to Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8. In this article, I want to show you some of the changes to ActionScript in Flash 8. These include changes to the editor as well as changes to the language itself.

I’m going to cover the following areas:

• Changes to the ActionScript editor
• Changes to the Actions panel
• Changes to the ActionScript language
• Miscellaneous changes

This article doesn’t include example files but you may want to read it with Flash 8 open so you can familiarise yourself with the new features. If you haven’t yet bought Flash 8, you can download a trial version from the Macromedia web site.

We’ll start by looking at changes to the ActionScript editor panel.

This article is part of the new interactive e-book; Out of my mind: Flash 8 Power

An Online Presentation Application With Flash Communication Server MX part 1

Introduction:

I believe most of you guys have attended online presentations with Macromedia Breeze or at least you have heard of Macromedia Breeze earlier and you may have thought, “What an outstanding application! I want to deliver my presentations, but I can’t afford it, what should I do? Can I make an application like this?”  The answer is yes! After reading this article you can make something like macromedia breeze. In this first part of this series, we will learn how to create such an application that lets you deliver your presentations online to your customers/visitors/clients and employees with features like slide-by-slide presentation, voice-over by the presenter, and chat facility b/w presenter and attendees of this presentation. So let’s move forward.

New in Flash Professional 8

What’s New in Flash Professional 8

Welcome to the second article about the new release, Flash 8. In the first article, I showed you the new features available in all editions of Flash 8. This article will cover at the new features that are only available within the Professional edition of Flash 8.  Flash Professional 8 is aimed at advanced web designers and web developers.  Macromedia recommends that it should be used by people who work with Flash on a regular basis. People who use Flash 8 infrequently should use Flash Basic 8.

This article is part of the new interactive e-book; Out of my mind: Flash 8 Power

Working with Masks in Flash

Masks allow you to show and hide elements within a Flash movie. You use a shape to determine which parts of the image to show and place it on a mask layer above the layer you want to cover. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how you can create a simple mask using the Flash interface. We’ll then add animation to the mask. I’ll show you how you can use ActionScript to set the mask and make it follow the movement of the mouse. We’ll also draw a shape in ActionScript with the Drawing API and use it to mask a photo. Finally, we’ll create a simple example where you can gradually reveal an image a mask and the mouse – kind of an instant lottery scratch effect.

I’ve used ActionScript 1.0 for the examples in the tutorial so you’ll need at least Flash MX to complete the exercises here. I’ve assumed that you’ve got some experience at working with ActionScript and that you know how to add code in the Actions panel.

You can download the resource files 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.

An online radio station for your website (Using Flash Communication Server MX) Part 2

Introduction:

In last article of this series, we learnt how we can make an MP3 Player for our websites that will continue to entertain our visitors by playing continuous music. We used Macromedia Flash MX 2004 to create such a player. In this episode, we will learn how to integrate our Player that we created in first part with Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX.