FirstPress Creating Flash Widgets with Flash CS4 and ActionScript 3.0.pdf

Contents

Chapter 1: Introducing Flash Widgets...........................................1

What are Widgets? .................................................................................. 1

A Brief History of Widgets...................................................................... 2

The Future of Widgets ............................................................................ 3

Why Make Flash Widgets? ..................................................................... 4

Summary.................................................................................................. 4

Chapter 2: Migrating to Flash CS4 and ActionScript 3.0 ..................5

What’s New and Different in Flash CS4 ............................................... 5

Using the New Tools..................................................................................... 5

Introducing the Motion Editor..................................................................... 14

Moving Up to ActionScript 3.0 ............................................................. 17

Summary................................................................................................ 27

Chapter 3: Developing Your First Widget ....................................29

Creating the Idea................................................................................... 29

Designing the Graphics ........................................................................ 31

Creating the Robot....................................................................................... 32

Connecting the Robot.................................................................................. 38

Keyframing the Dance Moves..................................................................... 40

Drawing the Dance Floor and Message Board............................................ 41

Importing the Music .................................................................................... 43

Writing the Code ................................................................................... 44

Creating Flash Widgets with Flash CS4 and ActionScript 3.0

Summary................................................................................................ 48

Chapter 4: Taking Flash Widgets to the Next Level ......................49

Adding Interactivity............................................................................... 49

Mouse-Over and Mouse-Out States ............................................................ 50

Handling the Mouse-Click Event and Cursor Position ............................... 57

Making It Configurable ........................................................................ 61

Driving It with XML ............................................................................. 65

Summary................................................................................................ 75

Chapter 5: Publishing, Promoting,

and Capitalizing on Your Widgets ...............................................77

The Prerequisites................................................................................... 77

Setting Up the Server .................................................................................. 77

Setting Up the Domain Name ..................................................................... 78

Getting Your Widget Ready to Deploy....................................................... 78

Uploading the Files ..................................................................................... 79

Signing Up with WidgetBox ....................................................................... 80

Adding Your Widget ................................................................................... 82

Testing Your Widget ................................................................................... 86

Publishing Your Widget........................................................................ 86

Submitting to the WidgetBox Gallery......................................................... 87

Turning Your Widget into a Facebook and Bebo App ............................... 87

Getting in Additional Galleries ................................................................... 89

Promoting Your Widget ........................................................................ 89

Capitalizing on Your Widget................................................................. 90

Summary................................................................................................ 90

Creating Flash Widgets with Flash CS4 and ActionScript 3.0

Creating Flash Widgets with Flash

CS4 and ActionScript 3

by John Arana

If you are a Flash designer or developer and are not making widgets, you’re

missing out! Creating widgets is a lot of fun and also a great way to make

yourself known as a Flash developer. This book shows you how to create Flash

widgets with some of the new features introduced in Flash CS4 and ActionScript

3.0. It also shows you how easy it is to make your widgets available on social-

networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, while at the same time exploring

how to promote and make money off of them. The Internet is being “widgetized,”

don’t miss out on this great opportunity to be a part of it!

Creating Flash Widgets with Flash CS4 and ActionScript 3.0

iii

For Valena and Isaac

Creating Flash Widgets with Flash CS4 and ActionScript 3.0

Chapter 1: Introducing Flash Widgets

The presence of Flash on the Internet has been increasing at an astonishing

rate since it was released in 1996. It started out as a simple animator and

gradually developed into a powerful tool which could be used to create

amazing content for the Web. This content came in many forms, including

intros, animations, advertisements, games, rich Internet applications, and

web sites. Each one of these raised the bar for the presentation layer of the

Internet causing a chain reaction in which Flash content ended up on a

countless number of web sites. With the onset of social-networking sites,

personal home pages, and blogs, a demand for this rich content brought

about yet another usage of Flash: widgets .

What are Widgets?

Widgets are basically mini-applications that can be embedded into a web

page with a snippet of code. This makes widgets both reusable and

portable. Some widgets, with slight alterations to the snippet of code, are

also user configurable. The term widget does not refer to the content but

rather to the packaging; in other words, the content of a widget can be

virtually anything. Widgets make it possible for people creating or

modifying web sites, social profiles, and blogs to include rich content

without having to develop it. From tools to games to just plain

entertainment, there are thousands of different types of widgets available

with new ones being released every day.

Some other names used to describe widgets are gadgets, modules, capsules,

minis, snippets, and plug-ins. Different names are used by different sites.

For example, they are called gadgets on iGoogle, plug-ins on WordPress

blogs, and apps on Facebook and MySpace.

Widgets can be broken down into different types based on the presentation

medium. Accordingly, there are desktop widgets, web widgets, and mobile

Creating Flash Widgets with Flash CS4 and ActionScript 3.0

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