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Change graph data and objects through script

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 17:58:55 GMT

Hi. I'm working on a document where I had to create several pie charts on Illustrator. I then colored each pie's slices with swatches from a custom swatch group. Now I need to change the order of the slices, which would mean manually changing the values that generate the pies and then recoor each slice again.

I've been looking through the Illustrator CC Scripting Reference: Javascript but I haven't found any way to manipulate a GraphItem's objects or the data that generates them.

Is there any way to script any of these two tasks:

1. Sort the data on a graph.

2. Select the individual contents on a graph and alter their properties.

Thank you.

Fill table cells with color % depending on cell content

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 22 May 2014 17:21:42 GMT

Hi.

I'm working on a document with a lot of tables filled with percentages. The tables are originally on a Word document and the table cells are tinted according to their content: a value of 20% on the cell corresponds to a tint of 20%. This is done automatically on the Word document through a conditional formatting option that applies a graded color scale. Is there any way to do this in InDesign? I tried placing the tables and tried all options, but the color is not imported. Perhaps a script or a GREP style?

Thank you.

GREP select every character up to first space

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 19 May 2014 13:45:36 GMT

Hi. I'm trying to format a reference list that contains several entries with urls (plain text, no interactivity) and I need those urls to be italic. I created a character style that I want to apply using GREP. In all the entries, the url is either the last thing on the paragraph, or it is followed by a space and then some text. All urls begin with http://. Here are some examples:

SMITH, H. The Laws of Physics, 2000. http://www.abcde.com/myexample.pdf

JONES, L. Just Another Title, 1996, General Editions - http://thisisit.com - last version checked: 3.1

Right now I've gotten it almost right. I've used the following expression:

http://.*(?= )

This looks for "http://"m then any character any number of times, then a positive lookahed for a space. However, this applies the style to everything up to the last space, like this:

JONES, L. Just Another Title, 1996, General Editions - http://thisisit.com - last version checked: 3.1

Any ideas on how I get it to work just up to the first space? I've also tried looking for a way to search for any characters except spaces, but couldn't find it.

Thank you.

Main Table of Contents that lists other TOCs

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sat, 03 May 2014 15:15:48 GMT

Hello.

I'm working on a scientific document with a lot of images and tables. I have created a Table of Contents (TOC) for the images and another for the tables. The titles for these TOCs have a paragraph style named "TOC title specific". I then need a main TOC that lists all chapters in the document and also the TOCs for the images and tables, but they don't show up when I generate this main TOC and I don't know why. I mapped all TOC styles and all styles on all TOCs are applied via the Table of Contents Styles, nothing is applied manually. Is this a feature or a bug that doesn't allow a TOC to list elements in other TOCs?

Thanks.

CS6 GREP apply nested style to all characters before first instance of string, excluding that string

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 18:19:15 GMT

Hello.

I'm formatting a bibliographic list for an article and all entries are formatted more or less like this:

SMITH, P., JONES, L. 2009. etc.

I need to apply a character style to everything that comes before the year, like this:

SMITH, P., JONES, L. 2009. etc.

I found a GREP expression that allows me to find everything up to the first digit, but it includes said digit, so I end up with this:

SMITH, P., JONES, L. 2009. etc.

That expression is ^.*?(. \d|$)

Can anyone help me tweak this, or find some other solution to achieve what I need? Thank you.

TLFTextField vertical scroll - scrollV not working?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:22:35 GMT

Hi. I'm using Flash CS6 on Mac OSX 10.7 and I was trying to use a TLFTextField and do some animations depending on its vertical scroll. I have an example here:

http://ecstweb.comuv.com/temp/forum/anim2.html

The text field intance is named txt01 and the text field that shows the value of txt01's scrollV property is named txt_scroll.

My code is:

import flash.events.*;

import fl.text.TLFTextField;

txt01.addEventListener(Event.SCROLL, itScrolled);

function itScrolled (e:Event) {

var s:int = e.target.scrollV;

txt_scroll.text = String(s);

}

When I scroll down, scrollV is always 0. If I reach the bottom of the text, when I scroll up scrollV is displayed correctly, although when it's on empty lines it displays 0 again, which makes no sense to me. What am I doing wrong? How can I get the correct scrollV value?

Thanks.

Browser window resize distorts contents for a moment

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:42:03 GMT

Hi.

I'm working on a project for a website and I've so far created some menus. You can see it here: http://ecstweb.comuv.com/temp/f1/site_fc.html

I'm using Flash CS6 on OSX and I tested this in Firefox and Safari.

The menus are movie clips containing the menu items, which are sprites with classic text fields and shapes for the backgrounds. The fonts are embedded and the animations are tweens. All of this is generated at runtime.

When I resize the browser window, the whole content distorts during the resizing and then goes back to the correct proportions when I stop. Is there a way to prevent this distortion?

Thank you.

Embed fonts on classic TextField doesn't work, even with TextFormat applied

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 17:05:00 GMT

Hi.

I created an Item that extends MovieClip and that has a TextField on it where it where it will display the item's name. I want to embed the font but I'm having trouble because the text won't display.

I read the embedFonts description (http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/text/TextField.ht ml#embedFonts) and I have formatted the TextField via a TextFormat instance with my chosen font.

My code:

import flash.display.MovieClip;
    import flash.text.AntiAliasType;
    import flash.text.TextField;
    import flash.text.TextFieldAutoSize;
    import flash.text.TextFormat;

    public class Item extends MovieClip {

        private var _sName:String = "";
        private var _txtName:TextField = new TextField();
        private var _nColor:uint = 0xAACC00;
        private var _tfText:TextFormat = new TextFormat();

        public function Item(s:String) {

            //also tried embedding here but got the same result
            _txtName.text = s;
            _txtName.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.RIGHT;
            _tfText.font = "Helvetica";
            _tfText.size = 30;
            _tfText.color = _nColor;
            _txtName.setTextFormat(_tfText);
            _txtName.antiAliasType = AntiAliasType.ADVANCED;
            _txtName.embedFonts = true;

            addChild(_txtName);
        }

If I remove the embed part the text shows correctly. I'm at a loss, what order of elements do I need to use to embed the font correctly?

Thank you.

Drawing a bitmap from a movie clip

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 01:54:07 GMT

Hello.

I'm building a sort of puzzle game in Flash CS6 where the user can drag shapes from a sidebar onto the main area and build other shapes. You can always drag, scale, rotate each shape, etc. The sidebar contains all shapes rotated at 90ª intervals for convenience.

The shapes align to the grid, but I don't want them to overlap with each other, so I set up a collision test. If the user drags a shape to a place where aligning with the grid would mean overlap, the shape returns to its original position, from where the dragging began.

The collision test first sees if there's a bounding box collision and if so, tests for pixel collision using bitmap data. Each shape is a movie clip with two nested movie clips: fill and stroke. I need this for further funcionality, like the stroke only showing when a shape is selected, changing fill color, having the shapes drawn on author time and then linked to classes, etc.

From what I read in this tutorial by Mike Chambers (and senocular), to get a correct pixel collision test I probably have to use a concatenated matrix to account for the transformations present, using the shape matrix and the fill matrix. Only then will I get the correct bitmap data I need. I'm new to matrices so I'm getting around this part.

My question is: is it possible to have a sort of visual "trace" of the bitmap data being compared? I could have two movie clips in one corner, each showing the shapes being compared, and they would be drawn using the bitmap data. Then I would have a clear notion when something was amiss, because they could be rotated, offset, etc.

I've tried using a combination of methods including bitmapData.draw(), copyPixels(), etc., but I only got fully filled rectangles, not shapes, even though the dimensions where correct.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Dynamically create variable type using string value

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 04:26:42 GMT

Hi. In my project I created several classes named Square1, Square2, Circle 1, Circle2, Triangle1, Triangle2, etc. They all extend MovieClip and the create different shapes and have slightly different properties that set them appart.

There comes a point when I need to instance them and add the instances to the stage. I do this through buttons that have a sType:String property, that corresponds to the name of the class they should instantiate. So button S1 has sType = "Square1", and so on.

Now, what I would like to do is, instead of having a ton of handler functions for all the buttons, have only a single function that handles all the buttons and decides which class to instantiate. It would be something like this:

function buttonClicked ($event:MouseEvent):void {

var instanceClass:String = $event.target.sType; //let's say it's "Square1"

var newShape:MovieClip = new [instanceClass]();

}

Is this possible?

Thank you.

Error 1136: expects 0 arguments but constructor needs 2

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 18:28:33 GMT

Hi. In my project I have a Box class that extends MovieClip, and Box has instances of the Egg class. The Egg class receives two arguments on instantiation, month (a string) and size (an int).

Here's my code:

package com.stuff {

import flash.display.MovieClip;
import com.stuff.Egg;

public class Box extends MovieClip {

     private var Egg1:Egg = new Egg("jan", 2);
     private var Egg2:Egg = new Egg("feb", 5);

     public function Box():void {
     }
}
}

package com.stuff {

public class Egg {

     public function Egg(m:String, s:int):void {
     }
}
}

When I test the movie I get the following error: 1136: Incorrect number of arguments. Expected 0.

What am I doing wrong? Thank you.

AIR application with tool panels in front of other windows

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:23:49 GMT

Hello. I'm using Flash CS6 on OSX and I'm working on an AIR desktop application. My application opens a local image file in a window, produces some calculations and shows the results in several panels. I want those panels to be like the ones on CS applications, for example. They should always be on top of the image windows. I've tried using the nativeWindow.NativeWindowInitOptions.owner to achieve this, but I can't get the hierarchy right. Any suggestions?

Thank you.

Preloader to estimate time for a function to finish?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 01:32:50 GMT

Hello. I'm building an AIR project that uses images stored locally to perform some calculations using their bitmapData. In this app I browse my hard drive via an application menu command I created, select an image (using FileReference) and it loads. When it finishes loading, the calculations take place and the image is added to the stage. The larger the image, the longer this takes.

So far, so good.

I added a preloader to check the FileReference loading time and another for the loadBytes method I use later to be able to use the bitmapData. What surprised me was that both theses processes were very fast, but with larger images they were taking a long time to be added to the stage. Some tracing and commenting later, I discovered the culprit was one of the calculations I was doing, involving pixel counts. So my question is, is there any way to create a preloader for this function?

Thank you.

Air desktop application: how to make a menu item bold?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 03:41:17 GMT

Hi, I'm using Flash CS6 to develop an AIR desktop application for OSX. I've created my menu using NativeMenu and such, but I can't find a way to make the first menu item bold, like a true OSX app. So far the little I've found on this always referred to Flex, not Flash. Any hints?

Thank you.

Classes and object-oriented programming in JSX for Illustrator?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:45:36 GMT

I'm new to scripting for Illustrator and so far I haven't seen scripts using imported classes and object-oriented programming. Is this possible and, if so, are there any good examples out there?

Thanks.

Coordinate system in illustrator

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:24:16 GMT

Hi. I'm trying to build a shape in Illustrator CS6, OSX 10.7.5, using a script with setEntirePath. I begin with:

var aPoints = new Array ([20, 50], [60, 30]);
pShape = app.activeDocument.pathItems.add();
pShape.setEntirePath(aPoints);

I expected a diagonal line on my artboard but it is actually drawn outside it. From this I gathered that the y axis is considered inverted in javascript and so I have to change the code to var aPoints = new Array ([20, -50], [60, -30]); to get the intended result.

To me this is not intuitive at all. Is there a reason this happens? And is there a way to change it so I can write the y coordinates the way they actually appear on Illustrator, with (0,0) at the top left and positive values to the right and down?

Thank you.

Basic question, duplicating a circle with javascript

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 20:16:31 GMT

Hello. I'm trying to build something like a bullseye using javascript. I'm new to scripting for Illustrator but I've used javascript before so I thought it would be simple, but maybe I'm missing some basic notions here.

I'm using Illustrator CS6. I created a blank document and drew a circle with a 1pt black stroke and no fill. Selecting that circle, I my script to copy and paste it in front and increase its radius by one centimeter. I attempted a simple duplication first:

if ( app.documents.length > 0 ) {
    var numberOfItems = 3;
    var selectedItem = app.activeDocument.selection;
    for (i=0; i < numberOfItems; i++) {
         newItem = selectedItem.duplicate();
    }
}

With my circle selected I get an error message saying "Error 24: selectedItem.duplicate() is not a function". What am I doing wrong?

Thank you in advance.

Page coordinates X and Y are not zero

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:26:04 GMT

Hello. I'm using InDesign CS6 and I was given a document to work on. I don't know which InDesign version was used to create it, but I'm not sure if it's important. When I was customizing the one master page, I noticed that the page's coordinates were not x=0 and y=0. Checked the preferences, document setup and other menu items, and tried using the Page Tool to change those values, but no luck, they always revert to the original values. This complicates my work a bit. Can anyone tell me why this happens and how to change it?

Thank you.

Relative links in interactive pdf

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:23:52 GMT

Hi. I'm building an interactive pdf that will work as the content of an interactive cd. The main document is saved on the "cd" directory, on the desktop. I created a button that will open an external pdf file. The link to the file is an absolute link:

Macintosh HD:Users:myuser:Desktop:cd:files:file1.pdf

Now, I need this to be a relative link so I can burn the cd and make sure it works, independently of the file's root address. How can I achieve this?

I tried changing the : to / and doing something like ./cd/files/file1.pdf but it didn't work. This probably has a simple solution, I just don't know how to express relative links in InDesign. Any advice? Thanks.

Extending class + accessing base class's children

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 23:18:57 GMT

Hello.

I'm trying to create a sort of info and tool panels for a project, similar to the ones on the Adobe Suite's products. They'll have a tab that you can double click to open or close them and the panel's title will be on this tab.

So I created a MovieClip called MainPanel and inside it I placed a textfield called txtTitle and a rectangular MovieClip called mTab. I duplicated the MainPanel twice on the stage, called them PanelA and PanelB, and added individual elements to them, but kept the txtTitle and mTab. I edited PanelA and PanelB's linkage options to link them to specific custom classes.

First I created a base class for the MainPanel.

package com.panels{

import flash.display.MovieClip;

import flash.events.MouseEvent;

import fl.text.TLFTextField;

public class MyPanel extends MovieClip {

public function MyPanel ():void {

txtTitle.mouseEnabled = false;

mTab.doubleClickEnabled = true;

mTab.addEventListener(MouseEvent.DOUBLE_CLICK, clickedPanel);

}

And then the classes for Panel A and B, which extend the MainPanel.

package com.panels{

import com.panels.MyPanel;

public class PanelA extends MyPanel {

public function PanelA ():void {

}

When I test the movie, I get an error saying "Access of undefined property txtTitle" (and the same for mTab). If I just link PanelA to the MainPanel class it all works - I got it to open, close, dragged it with the mouse... I can access mTab, txtTitle and anything else already on the stage. But if I extend the class, I no longer can. Does anyone know why this happens and the best way to get it to work? Thank you.

Event.CHANGE triggers twice on text input

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 23:03:19 GMT

Hello. I have an editable TLFTextField named "txt1" on the stage. I added an event listener for the Event.CHANGE, but it fires twice each time I press a key. My code:

import fl.text.TLFTextField;

import flash.events.*;

var n:int = 0; //number of times the event has fired

txt1.addEventListener(Event.CHANGE, changed);

function changed($e:Event):void {

trace ("text changed" + n++);

}

I test the movie and write some text on the txt1 text field.

Output:

text changed 0 //clicked on txt1, gained focus

text changed 1 //pressed "a"

text changed 2 //pressed "a"

text changed 3 //pressed "b"

text changed 4 //pressed "b"

...

Anyone knows why this happens?

Related: in this specific case my text field will allow the user to enter the width of an image, so I restricted it to "0-9". Whenever the number in the text field changes, some calculations are made. I thought of using TextEvent.TEXT_INPUT but since it doesn't dispatch for Delete or Backspace, I would have to use in combination with KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN and check for those keys, and it seemed simpler to use Event.CHANGE.

Thank you.

How to access bitmapData on class that extends Loader?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:59:32 GMT

Hi. I'm using Flash CS6 to create an AIR app that loads an image from the user's computer and then does a pixel count using its bitmap data.

MyImg is a class that represents the loaded image.

package com.utils{

import flash.display.Loader;

public class MyImg extends Loader {

public function MyImg ():void {

}

In my main class I handle the file selection and loading.

private var _myImage:MyImg = new MyImg();

private var _file:FileReference;

private var _fileTypes:FileFilter = new FileFilter("Imagens: (*.jpeg, *.jpg, *.gif, *.png)", "*.jpeg; *.jpg; *.gif; *.png");

When a "load image" button on the stage is clicked, it calls loadMyImg().

public function loadMyImg($e:MouseEvent):void {

chooseFile();

}

Then the user chooses the file he wants to load.

private function chooseFile():void {

_file = new FileReference();

_file.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, fileSelected);

_file.browse([_fileTypes]);

}

Once the file is selected, it's loaded as a byte array.

private function fileSelected($e:Event):void {

_file.removeEventListener(Event.SELECT, fileSelected);

_file.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, fileLoaded);

_file.load();

}

When it finishes loading it loads the byte array into _myImage.

private function fileLoaded($e:Event):void {

_file.removeEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, fileLoaded);

_myImage.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, dataReady);

_myImage.loadBytes(_file.data);

}

Once that is done I try to use the _myImage's BitmapData, but can't...

private function dataReady($e:Event):void {

$e.target.loader.contentLoaderInfo.removeEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, dataReady);

trace ($e.target + $e.target.content + $e.target.content.name + $e.target.content.bitmapData); //returns [object LoaderInfo] [object Bitmap] instance 155 [object BitmapData]

trace (_myImage + _myImage.content + _myImage.content.name + _myImage.contentLoaderInfo + _myImage.contentLoaderInfo.content.name); //returns [object MyImg] [object Bitmap] instance 155 [object LoaderInfo] instance 155

trace (_myImage.content.bitmapData) //compiler error: 1119 Access of possibly undefined property bitmapData through a reference with static type flash.flashDisplay:DisplayObject.

trace (_myImage.contentLoaderInfo.content.bitmapData) //same error

}

I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. The instances have the same name, so they must be the same. They both trace as bitmaps, yet when I don't access it from the event I don't get the bitmapData. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? I need to use the bitmapData from inside the MyImg class. I guess I could create some BitmapData variable in the class and give it the value of $e.target.content.bitmapData, but I'd still like to know why it can't be simpler.

Thanks!

Change color of placed transparent images (tiff, psd, png...)

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:47:22 GMT

Hi.

I have a project with quite a lot of placed images. They need to be transparent because I need to produce a number of variants and quickly change both the background and the color of those images. The images themselves have a single color. I know I could change their color in Photoshop and then place them in a group, but it would be a lot simpler to just place a black version of them, arrange them, and then duplicate that group and change the images' color. Can I do this in Illustrator? I've tried using tiffs, pngs and psds to get the transparent images, but I only managed to change color in tiffs (for example) when they didn't have transparency.

Can anyone help me with this? Thanks!

Using "Next style" with the same paragraph style for more than one paragraph

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 16:40:20 GMT

Hi.

I have been using paragraph styles with the "next style" option, it's a huge help. But I need a bit more. So I have the following paragraph structure: ABCCCABCCCAB...

I defined paragraph styles for each kind of paragraph, then in paragraph style A, I added paragraph style B as the next style, and so on. However, when I get to paragraph style C I reach a dilemma. Should I define the next style as the same, or define three paragraph C styles (C1, C2 and C3), link them to each other with next style, and then loop the C3 style into the A style again?

My hope is that there is a way, something like the nested style options, that allows me to define that style C should be used for 3 paragraphs and then the next style becomes style A again.

Thanks.

TOC displays items in the wrong order

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 13:13:06 GMT

Hello. I have a table of contents (TOC) for the images in a book I'm typesetting. The TOC style gets all items with a certain paragraph style, that is applied to the titles or subtitles of each image. The document has a master page with a main text frame, where all text is displayed. The images are in seperate frames. The images' titles are also in seperate frames, and they are grouped together with the corresponding image. These groups - image + title frame - are then pasted into the main text frame. I found this technique to be the best to keep everything flowing and ordererd.

Now, I have two images in one page, say, image1 and image2. Image1 comes first in the text frame in that page, but in the TOC it's displayed after image2. I've tried changing the image order on the layers, tried placing them again... It doesn't work. For some reason, image2 always shows up before image1 in the TOC.

Does anyone know why this happens and how I might solve it?
Thanks.

H&J violations not working properly

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:05:49 GMT

I'm typesetting a book using InDesign CS4. As usual, I have "H&J violations" turned on and go around fixing the worst cases, changing tracking and the horizontal scale.

Say I have a paragraph with 10 lines, all of them with varying degrees of h&j violation. Usually, when I make ammends to one line, unless there are words that change lines, the remaining paragraph keeps showing the same h&j violations, until I deal with each line.

However, in this book I'm doing now, almost every time I change the tracking or horizontal scale of text in one line - any line -, the yellow lines that indicate the violations disappear in the whole paragraph. Also, it usually doesn't matter wether I increase or decrease the tracking, the violations disappear, as if the whole paragraph was suddenly correctly spaced. The same is true if I create a discretionary hyphen, even in the middle of the line, where it won't change the paragraph at all.

I tried copying a text frame into a new document, and the violations shown are quite less in number, and everything seems to work correctly.

I have no idea why this occurs. This document is based on previous files I've done, and I've tried saving different copies, deleting InDesign preferences... Short of copying the whole thing into a new document, I don't know how to fix this. And I don't know if even this "solution" solves my problem in the long run.

Any hints? Thanks.

TOC styles and tabs

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:11:43 GMT

Hello. I'm working on a book and the TOC has the page numbers aligned to the right, via a right indent tab, that I defined on the paragraph styles the TOC uses.
Some of the entries, however, are a bit long and so they get too close to the page number or even fill more than one line. This makes the page number flow into the next line as well, although it remains right aligned, as it should.

What I need is to define a right aligned tab for the text and one for the page number. This would essentially define a margin between the entry's text and the page numbers.
Also, if possible, I'd prefer to have the page number always on the first line of the entry and not have it flow to the last one.

Any thoughts? I hope I explained this well enough, but if it's not the case, just let me know. Thanks in advance.

Lists, levels and indentation

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:42:58 GMT

Hi. I need to format a few lists like this:

1. Main topic

1.1. Topic A

1.2. Topic B

1.1. Topic A

1.1.1. Topic A1

1.1.2. Topic A2

1.2. Topic B

1.2.1. Topic B1

1.2.2. Topic B2

So far I can do this with three different lists and paragraph styles for each one. However, I'm guessing this might be possible to achieve and automate with only one list. I'd like to:

a) be able to change Topic A to Topic C on the 1st list and have it update as well on the 2nd list.

b) change the number formatting on Topic A on the 1st list and have it change accordingly on the 2nd list.

c) use the same paragraph style for Topic A on the 1st and 2nd lists - this would accomplish b)

I'm not sure if any of this is actually possible, but if at least one thing is it would help me immensely. Thank you.

Running headers and interactive links

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 19 May 2009 02:47:48 GMT

Hello.

I made this book in InDesign CS4 and I'm now converting it into an interactive presentation. I've included a running header in my master page and I'm trying to have it work as interactive breadcrumbs. The running header shows the title of the current chapter, and clicking on it should jump to the first page of that chapter. I've been trying to learn more about hyperlinks, bookmarks and other ways to move around the content, but can't seem to find a way to build a variable link in the master page, one that changes to match the running header.

Is this even possible? Perhaps with some plug-ins or 3rd party software? Is GREP possible for defining variables and are those expressions valid for building links/bookmarks/something?

*crosses fingers*

If not, then perhaps I could do with a script that I would run when I finished the project, and it would search all running headers and build the links accordingly.

I appreciate all the help you can give me on this one, thanks.

CS4 - 3d properties not working on custom extended classes

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:18:04 GMT

Hello. I've created a simple custom class that extends Sprite and called it Sprite2. It has no specific methods nor is it in any way different from Sprite, it just extends it. When I create instances of Sprite2 and try to access properties like rotationX/Y/Z or z, I get an error saying "1119: Access of undefined probably property...". If I insert a simple trace (z); in the constructor, I get "1120: Access of undefined property z..."

I don't understand why this happens, is this some CS4 bug? I have installed the latest updates.

Thanks in advance

Gallery using spry grow effect that targets the clicked thumbnail

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:07:48 GMT

Hello. I'm trying to build a gallery with thumbnails that, when clicked, grow to display the full-size image. I created an xml spry data set and I'm using a spry:repeat to go through each row of the data set and create the thumbnail. Then I attach the grow effect, but since the target is each of the thumbnails, I need an unique id for each. I tried using id="thumb_{ds_RowID}" (and ds_RowCount and ds_RowNumber) but it doesn't work.
I guess ds_RowID is not valid outside the spry:region, but perhaps there's a way around this?

Can anyone give me any sort of advice on how I could make this work? Thank you.

Spry xml data set, accessing specific rows

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:21:05 GMT

Hello. I've been trying to build a website using Spry XML Data Sets, and while I've accomplished my goals for now, I don't think the solution I came up with is the best.

The website consists of several areas that show projects. Each project has several fields that are to be filled with content retrieved from the xml files, but the projects are not all exactly alike and some have specific fields that others don't require.

All the info is available in several languages, so for now I've created an xml file for each one. An xml file could be like Code Part1. (Why I can't add several code snippets along the post baffles me. I mean, I can't, right?)

This dataset, for simplicity purposes, is not dependent on the language (Code Part2).

And then there are the content areas (Code Part3).

So as you see, each project has its own structure. This makes using spry:repeat a not very effective method for filling in all the content. Ideally I should be able to access each row in the dataset through some sort of value, like id, or one of its children's values. The ds_RowID depends on the row order, so unless there's another way to use it, it doesn't solve my problem.

Here's what I've come up with (Code Part4).

This works (in FF3 OSX, at least), although there are some other problems that might make it necessary to create a spry:region (or at least use spry:repeat) for each field. Anyway, it sounds silly and wasteful to go through every row of the dataset everytime for each of the fields that need to be filled.

My hope is that I'm ignorant of some much better method of achieving my goals, something more direct and elegant.

Can anyone help me out with this? Thank you very much in advance.

SPRY NestedXMLDataSet

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:27:23 GMT

Hi. I'm learning to use the Spry framework and I've ran into some problems while creating nested xml data sets.

I have all the necessary .js and spry files linked. My goal is to use a data set like dsProjects4, one that is nested and that is linked to the "language" of the dsLanguages data set. That way, when the language changes, the data displayed by regions linked to dsProjects4 will change accordingly. It works if it's not a nested data set (dsProjects2), but I don't understand why it doesn't if it's nested.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong and why the nested xml data set number 4 doesn't work?
Thank you in advance.

SPRY Collapsible Panel widget

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:29:44 GMT

Hi.

I've built a page with several collapsible panels and inserted some flash animations on the tabs. When I click on a part of the panel tab that is not filled with the animation, it opens and closes normally. When I click on the animation, however, it does nothing. Can anyone tell me how to solve this?

Thank you in advance.

Full-browser window flash, 100% width/height not working

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:58:29 GMT

Hello.

I'm pretty sure this issue has been discussed before but I couldn't find a suitable answer.

I need my flash website to fill the whole browser window. In the 1st frame of my .fla file I used:

stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;

In the Publish Settings, I used 100% width and height and Default scale mode.

I even tried adding CSS styles to the .html file, defining padding and margin as 0px and applying them both to the body tag and to a custom class that was later applied to the object tag that embeds the .swf file on the html.

Still, the latest versions of Firefox, Safari and Opera (all on Mac OSX Leopard) still display a border around the website.

What can I do? Thanks in advance.

Can a swf file begin executing code before loading completely?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:12:57 GMT

I have a swf file with a preloader on the stage at authoring time. The preloader centers itself by retrieving the stage dimensions and calculating the coordinates it needs.

This works everytime in Flash preview, but once I put it online it only works sometimes, mostly after I refresh the page. The stage width and height it seems, are considered = 0 when this happens and so my preloader doesn't position itself correctly.

The only reason I can determine for this error is that when the code begins to execute the swf is not fully loaded, and thus it gets wrong stage dimensions. I have exported the swf file to have 100% width and heigth, don't know if there are known issues with this mode of publishing.

Any help on this matter is appreciated, thanks in advance.

Referencing a MovieClip on stage through XML

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:11:20 GMT

Hello.

I have a swf with several MovieClip instances on the stage at authoring time. For example, say I have mBuilding that contains mFloor, that in turn contains mAppartment.

I have an xml file that contains data so the swf knows what to do with the MovieClips.

I've been trying different things, but I'm still stumped. Can anyone give me some advice?

Thanks in advance.

Saving workspace options

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:01:00 GMT

Hello.

During projects, I often use the same files and pin the script on the same frames in the actions palette, so I can switch easily between them. I don't know if there is a way you can save your workspace in order to include all of the open files and all the frames with pinned scripts.

Anyone know a way to do this? Thanks in advance.

Sprite and child sprite, click event on both

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:48:59 GMT

Hello.

I have this menu item, which is a Sprite. The menu item then has several other items, also Sprite, as children. All items have a listener for click events. When I click the parent item, it's all ok, but when I click one of the children, both the child and the parent Sprite's event handler functions are triggered.

How can I stop the parent sprite from responding to the click on the child?

Thanks in advance.

Convert XML string to hexadecimal uint color

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:16:00 GMT

Hello. I have an xml file containing color values to be applied in a series of shapes in my swf. However, when I try to assign the values, it doesn't work, it recognizes only a string and assigns the value 0 to the colors.

Can anyone help me with this? Thanks.

XML file size increases GREATLY with <![CDATA[

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:01:48 GMT

I have several .xml files that provide info for a website of mine and was quite surprised to discover, while I was uploading them, that some of them were around 60-70kb, while others were 4kb or less. Knowing that the amount of content in all of them doesn't vary that much, I noticed that the biggest file sizes corresponded to the files using <![CDATA[ ]]>.

I included a sample file code below. It's in Portuguese, but I think it's still obvious that this file could not be more than a few kb, and Dreamweaver (CS3) saves it with a whopping 62kb!

I tried saving the exact same file in Text Edit and it resulted in a normal file size.

Has anyone encountered similar situations? I'm guessing this is some sort of bug, that Dreamweaver puts some extra content - somewhere - because of the CDATA. Is there any sort of reason or fix for this?

Thanks in advance.

Send an e-mail from a Flash website

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:06:44 GMT

Hi.

Say I have a flash website. Is it possible to create a form a user can fill and then send that info as an e-mail to the webmaster's e-mail account? Can I do this using only flash? Does the website domain require anything specific, like database/php support? If I require anything besides Flash, can you give me any hints on how to achieve this?

Thank you.

Linkage + acessing instance's children

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:04:32 GMT

Hello.

I've created a Movie Clip (mcMain) at authoring time and created several others inside it (mc_1,...,mc_n). I've exported it for actionscript as myMC and then created the corresponding custom class.

When I try to create a new instance of myMC dynamically, I can't access the children Movie Clips from the myMC class. I can, however, access them if the instance is added at authoring time.

How can I access the children Movie Clips from the class for dynamically added instances?

Thanks in advance.

Counting pixels of a specific colour

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:49:36 GMT

Hello.

Can anyone tell me if it's possible to load an image into flash and count the pixels of a specific colour in that image?

I'm trying to develop an application that loads images with a white background, then counts all the white pixels and returns the number of non-white pixels.

I don't need a step-by-step explanation of how to achieve this (although I'd be immensely grateful if anyone would go to that trouble), for a now a simple yes or no, and perhaps a few clues would be plenty of help.

Thanks in advance.

LoaderInfo and ProgressEvent.PROGRESS

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:45:06 GMT

Hi.

I'm working on a project where I have to preload several .swfs. I created a custom class (myLoader) that extends the Loader class and adds it a few string variables with data I need. To each instance's contentLoaderInfo I add event listeners for ProgressEvent.PROGRESS and assign the same event handler function.

The problem is, I need to access the myLoader instance from the event handler, but so far I haven't been able to, not until it finishes loading.

Any help in this matter is very appreciated.

Moving Sprite with arrow keys, simultaneous directions

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:57:05 GMT

Hi everyone.

I'm trying to create a small arcade style game, you control a small ship, shoot at incoming targets, try to dogde their shots, etc. I'm working on the ship's movement right now, using the arrow keys to control it. Getting it to move one direction at a time is easy, but sometimes I need to move it diagonally, otherwise I think gameplay will suffer considerably.

I have tried several things but I never seem to be able to tell Flash that two keys are being pressed simultaneously. Can anyone tell me how I might achieve this?

Thank you.

ScrollBar basics

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:38:51 GMT

Hi.

I have a thumbnail gallery to which I need to attach a scroll bar, to scroll through the gallery items.

The gallery is a sprite and it has another sprite, called sprContent, as a child. The thumbnails are then loaded and arranged as children of sprContent.

Then I created a ScrollBar component instance, filled its properties and added it as a child of the gallery, thinking it would then scroll its content. Where do I have to add the ScrollBar component for it to work as I need?

Thanks in advance.

Acessing an URLLoader's "parent"

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:06:40 GMT

And hello again...

I created a custom class called MyFile.as (see attached code), representing a css or xml file to be loaded. The purpose of this class is to gather several properties relating to a file, so they can be used by several .swfs that will be loaded later.

I create an instance of MyFile, load some content with an URLLoader (uld) and listen for the load to complete. How can I then reference the MyFile instance to which the URLLoader belongs?

Thank you.

Acessing a loaded .swf's parent display object

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:56:14 GMT

Hello.

In this website I'm currently developing I have a main.swf with only a preloader. I preload several .xml files and the content.swf. The content.swf acts on some of the .xml files and creates a custom gallery, deciding which images it needs to load. Now, I figure that I can use the same preloader in the main.swf to show the loading progress for these images before removing it and adding the content.swf to the display list. But for that I need to access main.swf's properties - namely, the preloader - from the content.swf.

How can I do this? Thank you.

Preloader, loading file order, exporting classes

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:16:17 GMT

Hi. Just some general questions about loading files and preloaders.

1. Say I have several xml, css files and images that need to be loaded. When given the chance, should I load them all at the same time or provide an order and only load a file when the previous has finished loading?

2. I want to use a preloader to indicate the loading progress. Should I use a main.swf with only the preloader and then load all the necessary files (even if it's only one) into it, or have everything on the main.swf and when the preloader ends it just goes to a different frame/scene/anything?

3. I have created several custom classes. Should I, if possible, export them at a frame posterior to the preloader's?

Thank you for your time!