Creating a Web Poll in Flash MX 2004: Pt. 3

In part one of this series, we created a simple web poll application. The poll displayed a question and responses taken from an external source – either a text file, XML file or database.  In part two, we recorded the vote and displayed a simple chart. We also looked at how the results could be updated. In these two parts, we based our code on functions written in AS2.0.

In the final tutorials in this series, we are going to create the application but this time, we'll use classes in ActionScript 2.0. So, if you're looking to get started in this area, look no further than this tutorial and the one following! We'll use the same web poll application but to simplify things, we'll focus on using an Access database to provide the content.

Creating your own classes is a great approach to writing code in ActionScript. It allows you to create blocks of code that you can easily reuse throughout your work. If you work in a team, it also allows designers and developers to work separately on the same Flash project.

For this tutorial, you'll need some kind of web server and a server-side language like PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP or ASP.NET. Because I'm an ASP developer, the examples in this tutorial use VB.NET. My own computer is set up to use IIS 5 as the Web server and it has the .NET 1.1 framework installed.

You can download the files for this tutorial 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. It contains the source files you'll need for the tutorial as well as the completed files.

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Creating a Web Poll in Flash MX 2004: Pt. 2

In the first part of this tutorial, we looked at how you could create a simple web poll application. The poll displays a question and a list of radio buttons containing responses. The user selects a response, votes and then views a simple chart showing all responses. The content for the web poll is taken from an external source and, in part one, we looked at the different sources available to Flash - a text file, an XML file and a database.

The first part of the tutorial covered the LoadVars and XML classes and we added radio buttons to our Flash movie dynamically. I've assumed that you've completed this tutorial. If not, you might find it useful to complete it first.

In this tutorial, we'll collect the user's vote and display a simple chart. We'll also update the results in the text file, XML file and database. You'll learn techniques to add movie clips and text files dynamically as well as using the LoadVars class to update the data sources.

By the end of the last tutorial, we had created three Flash files that loaded external content, one each for a text file, XML file and database. When you have finished this tutorial, you'll be able to display a chart and update each of these data sources.

Please note if you want to work with a database or update the poll results, you'll need some kind of web server and a server-side language like PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP or ASP.NET. Because I'm an ASP.NET developer, this part of the tutorial will use ASP.NET, IIS 5 with .NET, and Access for the back-end.

All the source code is available for download.

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Creating a Web Poll in Flash MX 2004: Pt. I

In this series of tutorials, we're going to create a very basic poll application in Flash MX 2004. The poll will ask a question and show a list of radio buttons containing responses. The user will select a response, vote and then view a simple chart showing all the responses received so far. This application could be useful for an Intranet or even a web site.

We'll want to ask new poll questions from time to time so we'll read in the poll details from an external source. We could use a text file, an XML file or a database to store the information. Using one of these sources means that we won't have to open the Flash file and republish it each time we change the question. We can just update the source and the Flash movie will update automatically.

This first tutorial will look at how you could load content from all three sources and is written for ActionScript 2.0. We'll build functions to read in the poll details and display them in a Flash movie. We'll add radio buttons to the stage dynamically.

Part two of the tutorial will deal with collecting the vote, displaying a simple chart and updating the results, while the third part of the tutorial will recreate the poll application using the new AS 2.0 classes and will provide a great introduction to working with classes in Flash MX 2004.

Please note if you want to work with a database or update the poll results, you'll need some kind of web server and a server-side language like PHP, Cold Fusion, ASP or ASP.NET. Because I'm an ASP.NET developer, this part of the tutorial will use ASP.NET, IIS 5 with .NET, and Access for the back-end.

All the source code is available for download.

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Developing Flash/Database Interaction using Dreamweaver. Pt IV: Creating and Deleting Records

This is the last article in the series on developing Flash database-driven applications using Dreamweaver. Over the course of the articles we've been working on a simple user management application involving Flash on the front-end and PHP/MySQL on the back-end.

So far we have built a basic Flash interface (we've been concentrating mostly on the ActionScript code driving it rather than the aesthetics) and implemented some common web application functions.

In the first article we created a basic authentication mechanism, while in the second we built a protected page that extracted information from the database. Last week we expanded the functionality a bit further and added an update mechanism to the application.

All the way through the series we've been using Dreamweaver MX 2004 to do the hard coding work and have created a set of "Flash services" – web pages with server-side code which facilitate communication between our Flash interface and our database.

The subject of today's article is the enhancement of our application by adding the functionality that is obviously missing from our application – the ability to create and delete records.

All the Flash and PHP source code for the series is available for download.

 

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Creating a PowerPoint Style Presentation in Flash: Pt. 2

This tutorial picks up from Creating a PowerPoint Style Presentation in Flash: Pt.I where we looked at enhancing a presentation created from a template within Flash. In that first tutorial, we started with one of the 'out-of-the-box' presentation templates that comes with Flash and enhanced it with rewind and fast forward buttons, a slide counter and a progress bar to improve the user (and viewer experience).

In this tutorial, we'll work with keyboard shortcuts and save our own presentation template.  We'll also create a kiosk-style presentation that runs automatically using the setInterval action.

This tutorial assumes you understand basic ActionScript commands and are comfortable adding them to movies. Although this tutorial follows on from the first one, this tutorial comes with a complete code download.

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Developing Flash/Database Interaction using Dreamweaver. Pt III: Updating Records

This is the third in Alex's gentle introduction to database-driven Flash application and in this article he's going to be adding an Update mechanism to the user management application he's been using as an example.

Again, Dreamweaver will be doing most of the hard work as we see how to create two Flash services to handle the update request sent from our Flash GUI and enable an update function on our existing Flash interface.

While doing this we'll see how to avoid the potential disaster of accidentally creating duplicates of the records that must stay unique (in our example this could happen when we try to modify the username field). We'll also be seeing a couple of tricks about Flash development including how to use Dreamweaver's Server Behaviours to our best advantage.

If you've missed out on the first article on creating a basic authentication mechanism, and the second on building a protected page that extracts information from the database, don't worry as the Flash and PHP source code for the article is available for download.

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Creating a PowerPoint Style Presentation in Flash: Pt. 1

Flash is a great alternative to PowerPoint when it comes to creating on-screen presentations. Presentations created in Flash are usually significantly smaller than those created in PowerPoint, especially where narrations and other sounds are included. Furthermore, the presentation graphics are normally vector-based so you won't ruin the look a Flash presentation by resizing it! It is also easy to add a Flash presentation to your Web site or to a CD-ROM.

This tutorial is the first of a two part series. In the first part, we'll create a presentation using one of the standard templates that ships with Flash. Since we can customise the look and feel of these templates as well as extending them with ActionScript, here we'll extend the presentation by adding rewind and fast forward buttons, including a slide counter that can also be used for navigation and adding a progress bar.

In the second article, we'll add the same keyboard shortcuts that are available in PowerPoint. We'll also create a presentation template. We'll finish by creating a kiosk-style presentation that runs automatically using the setInterval action.

I've assumed that you understand basic ActionScript commands and that you're comfortable adding these to your Flash movies. In the first part of the tutorial, we'll work with some of the events and properties associated with buttons and use input text fields. In part two, we'll learn about keyboard listeners and setInterval.

This tutorial come with a complete code download.

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