bunnyhero dev

So I finally upgraded to Flash CS3, and I noticed something that has changed in the UI.

You see that little button I circled?

In Flash 8, that button would toggle the X, Y fields between displaying the coordinates of the selected object’s upper-left corner and its registration point. In Flash CS3, though, the button toggles between showing the object’s transformation point vs its registration point.

There seems to be no way to show the object’s upper-left corner coordinates any more!

Unfortunately this was a feature I used a lot. I could write down an object’s upper-left coordinates so that I could later restore its visual position on the stage even if I changed the symbol’s registration or transformation points. Those numbers are critical if I want to edit a symbol’s registration point without disturbing its visual placement on the stage.

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When Flash Player 9 goes into full screen mode, it pops up a little security message that tells the user how to exit full screen mode. It appears as white text on a semi-transparent black background so it is generally always visible (which is good). Still, I wondered if it could be obscured.

The message is always on top, so it is impossible to draw over it. But what if we tried distracting the user from the actual security message?

Here’s a silly test:

Of course, you can press Esc (or alt+tab to another window) to escape.

UPDATE: I have made the source code available, warts and all, under a ZLib licence. Share and enjoy

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I just discovered some strange behaviour in the Flash player if you try to change variables passed in through the query string before the movie has finished loading.

That is:
If a movie is loaded with the URL:
movie.swf?a=initialValue

and the movie contains a script that does something like this:
_level0.a = "some other value"

the value of a will get reset to “initialValue” on every frame, until the movie finishes loading!

This is different than if you pass in the variable using flashVars. If you use flashVars, the variable stays set, as you would expect it to.

Here are some tests to demonstrate the behaviour. It’s best to clear your cache in between each test, or you will get varying results.

• Using query string variables
• Using flashVars

Here’s a screenshot from a test using query string variables:

The test movie is embedded with code that passes the variable “a” set to “from html“. The movie continually displays the value of the variable “a” in the scrolling text field. On the fourth frame, it changes the the value of a to “set from script.”

At any time, you can click on the “Set” button to set the variable to “set from script.” When the movie is finished loading (there’s a 700K JPEG file on the last frame to make the movie large and slow-loading), you can click the “Stop” button to stop the scrolling text field from updating.

Play with both tests, and compare the effects if you clear the cache between tests or not, and try clicking “Set” at different times.

UPDATE: This only seems to occur in movies published for Flash Player 8! Here’s a test using a movie published for Player 7 and variables passed via the query string:

• Using query string variables, Flash Player 7

And, of course, I have no idea how ActionScript 3/Flash Player 9 behaves in a similar situation…

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