How to Create Dynamic Flash Templates
Creating Flash templates that are dynamic gives you the ability to tailor the appearance and behavior of a Flash website to suit virtually any purpose. To make your Flash work dynamically, you need to give it the ability to take external data to use as the basis for building and presenting the contents whenever a viewer comes to the website. Designing a Flash template to use data in this way is generally a straightforward task, and will ideally result in sites that are flexible and adaptable.
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Instructions
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Create your Flash file and save it on your computer, choosing document properties such as dimensions. Insert any elements you plan on keeping the same across all uses of the template. A dynamic Flash template provides users with options for how the site looks and behaves on visitor interaction, so decide which elements your users are going to be able to change, and which will stay the same.
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Create elements in your Flash file to hold the dynamic elements you plan on importing. It's generally advisable to create holder objects in your Flash file using symbols such as Movie Clips and text fields that you can then refer to in your code, making any changes indicated by the dynamic data. To demonstrate this, create two dynamic text fields in your Flash movie, giving them the Instance Names "header_txt" and "intro_txt" and placing them near the top of the stage area.
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Use an XML document to give your users control over the template. Create an XML file in a text editor and save it as "site_data.xml" in the same directory as your Flash file, entering code using the following syntax:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<heading>My Site Heading</heading>
<intro>This is the intro text for the site...</intro>
This is a simple example to demonstrate the principle of using XML data to determine some properties of your Flash movie, but in your own projects you can include many different elements such as text, data and images to import for display.
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Import the XML data into your Flash file by creating a new layer and entering ActionScript 3.0 code as follows:
var siteXML:XML;
var siteDataLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
siteDataLoader.load(new URLRequest("site_data.xml"));
siteDataLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, setupProperties);
function setupProperties(event:Event):void
{ siteXML = new XML(event.target.data);
header_txt.text=siteXML.heading[0];
intro_txt.text=siteXML.intro[0]; }
Export and test your movie to check that the two text fields now contain the text from the XML file.
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Extend your XML and ActionScript to set any additional properties of the Flash template you wish. You can include any properties that can be set using ActionScript -- for example, images to import, layout, and colors for text or other elements. If your Flash template contains changing elements such as transitions between images, you can also opt to set transition properties such as speed, and interactive properties of buttons or other user controls. Add one new element at a time and implement it in ActionScript before moving on to the next.
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Tips & Warnings
Make your Flash templates capable of holding a variety of different types of websites, rather than designing them with one particular type in mind.
Include clear instructions if your templates are going to be used by other people. If people are going to be editing the XML, make sure it has a structure that is easy to understand.
