www.jurjans.lv / Flash

Flash Resources

Macromedia Flash is an amazing platform for Internet/intranet/extranet site/application development. With version 5 it fancies a powerful ECMAscript-compatible scripting language, called ActionScript.

This page is devoted to some of my Flash projects where any one of them is to address some specific shortcoming of Flash5 player. Some of the solutions below have become a mere "workaround for Flash5", now when Flash MX is here. Download the FLA or AS sources and use in your projects. Please give credit where due. Write me if you spot a bug. Contact me if you want to contribute.

Downloads

	Document	Description	Flash MX notes
	RegExp class	A fully JavaScript-compatible RegExp class for Flash5 ActionScript	The new player still doesn't have RegExp engine within. Still have to use my AS engine for your MX applications. Expect an updated version soon.
	Dynamic shape (includes bitmap and animation)	A code for drawing a freeform triangle - the mother of all shapes. This sources has also an explanatory tutorial	The new shape drawing API functions allow for dynamic drawing of solid-fill shapes. However, if you need to stretch a symbol (movieclip, bitmap, etc) for 3d effect, this is still a hot download.
	Dynamic polygon	An application for dynamic shape code	Unless you want to scramble polygon in bitmap triangles, shape drawing API functions will do the job much quicker.
	Dynamic text width calculator	To address a Flash5 shortcoming of not having a shorthand way to determine the width of non-static texts	The new TextField object completely solves this shortcoming. Check the textWidth and textHeight properties.
	Unicode in Flash	A workaround for being able to write multi-language texts in Flash (including dynamic ones)	Macromedia claims that the new authoring environment and player let to work with Unicode characters. Read the tech note for more info.
	FLASM debugger	A simple debugger for FLASM developers. Shows the contents of stack and registers and saves them in multi-pane window. Includes custom trace window	The Flash 6 player flushes the stack on every frame, so the old method for determining "the end of stack" fails. Otherwise, this debug app is still handy.