MAX 2005: Using Flash and Director Together
Mark Jonkman started by showing the differences between of Flash and Director. Sample uses of Flash in Director included interface components, Director as a shell around a Flash movie, and a Flash movie as an integral component of an application made in Director.
Mark showed a lot of examples of Flash use in Director, and talked about how you can actually debug Flash by using the Director Message window — accessing variables inside of the running Flash member. He also took a look at the history of Flash and Director communication, from Director 6 to 10. Then he concentrated on the modern method used in the Flash 7 Xtra. Things like direct access to properties and function and using setCallBack().
Mark’s talk is actually one of the most technical ones I’ve seen at the show. Instead of just telling us what “could be done”, Mark is actually naming the commands and showing code examples. This could be a course or mini-book on Director-Flash communication.
For the upcoming Flash 8 Xtra, Mark mentioned probable improvements like the use of alpha video, performance improvements, access to bitmap mage data, effects and blend modes, and an unnamed “convert” feature which can pass binary and image data back and forth.
Mark showed an example of using the Flash Xtra to bring up a dialog box to browse for a file and then upload it to a server. Flash 8 Xtra functionality. This could replace the use of Xtras for such things.
4 Responses to “MAX 2005: Using Flash and Director Together”
I really wish I had been there for that talk.
I mostly develop in Flash now, but when I do use Director I always have it filled with Flash elements. I’d buy a book on Director-Flash communication. Especially written by Gary! I spend like half my Director development time getting my Flash code to work the way I want it to in Director.
Gary, you didn’t mention the after-hours Director get-together co-sponsored by Integration New Media (INM), DOUG and Macromedia. At this even, in addition to sampling a bizarre mixture of alcoholic beverages, INM demonstrated the new INM V12 Database for Flash, which is now in beta and available on our site.
I hope the new Adobe company will keep up the tradition and that we’ll all meet again somewhere next year.
Just want to chime in and say I would find it very helpful to see any new, more comprehensive docs on this subject, specifically on the correct use of MM Flash v2 components in a SWF that gets loaded into Director, not just individual components dropped in as separate elements on the Director stage. I do the bulk of my coding in Flash, and then use Director as a wrapper for standalone apps that need to do things like talking to the file system. My problem is that I run into roadblocks trying to get some of the Flash v2 components (e.g., combo box, list) to work in this situation. I would love to learn that it’s just a lack of knowledge on my part, and not a bug, that is causing these problems.
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