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Flash Reference Guide

Aug 22, 2003

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Earlier in this reference guide, you were introduced to Components in Flash. Components are specialized, pre-built movie clips that enable you to build common controls more easily in Flash. If you’re a visual programmer, then you’ll be familiar with this technique, which is found in tools such as J-Run and Visual Studio.

In this section of the guide, I’m focusing on form building with Components. I’m not going to explain how to bind the Form Components to a data source—I’ll cover that later. In this article, I’ll introduce you to Form Components and explain how to lay them out on the screen.

Using Form Components

Flash provides you with 22 User Interface Components, most of which can be considered Form Components. What is a Form Component, you ask? Broadly defined, a Form Component is a tool used in the design of a user form. (Consequently, Loader ProgressBar Components are not considered Form Components.)

The Components you will find yourself commonly using are:

Accordion
Button
Checkbox
ComboBox
DataGrid
DataChooser
DateField
Label
List
Menu
MenuBar
NumericStepper
RadioButton
ScrollPane
TextArea
TextInput
Tree

You can find all the Components listed in Flash’s Components panel.

Figure 1

Any Component can be dragged from the Components panel and dropped onto the Stage. The following diagram demonstrates several Components on the Stage:

Figure 2

The Components, as they are presented here, have simply been dragged from the Components panel on to the Stage. The values of each Component have not been changed, but you can do so using the Property Inspector’s Parameters tab. For instance, you can change the CheckBox Component’s label and placement and you can set whether or not the checkbox is checked by default:

Figure 3

Laying Components on the Screen

Dragging and dropping Components on to the Stage isn’t difficult. The challenge comes in laying out your Components. There are several schools of thought on how to design a form in Flash. The fundamentals used in Web design, desktop application design, and publishing, however, all still apply—there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. You’ll want to ensure, for example, that you add labels and group like components together.

The following example takes some of the common Components and applies standard designs. You’ll see that groups of Components are placed together. Blocking has been found to be easier for people to understand:

Figure 4

There are many other ways in which you can control the layout of the Form Components on the Stage.

Extending Form Components

As you might expect, the Components covered in this section of the guide can be extended and modified in many ways. Leveraging ActionScript is likely the first way you’ll want to begin extending Components. In later guides, I’ll cover how you can tie Components together with ActionScript.

The Components’ physical presentation can also be extended. The techniques for this process can become very complex and will also be covered in a later article in this guide.

The final way to extend your Form Components is to completely replace the Components you’re using with third-party Components. There are several Web sites that you can use to find the best and latest Components. The sites I use are:

Flash Exchange (http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm#loc=en_us&view=sn110&viewName=Flash%20Exchange)
Flash Foundry (http://www.flashfoundry.com/)
SWF Tools (http://www.swftools.com/)

There are many more sites that sell extensions—these are just a few of my favorites.

Summary

In this article, you were introduced to the many Form Components in Flash. These Components are designed specifically to make your life as a developer and designer easier. Leveraging the design functions within Flash enables you to easily control the design and layout of the Components on the Stage.

You don’t have to settle with using just the collection of Components Flash provides. There are many additional third-party extensions and new Components you can buy and use. Just take your pick.

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