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Contact Information

Phone: (865) 974-9670
Fax: (865) 974-2842
Email: etc@itc.tennessee.edu

Address:
James D. Hoskins Library
1400 West Cumberland
Knoxville, TN 37996.0520








Project SET

Modules

Developing Reusable Components in Flash MX

launch module

Eric Lingerfelt

Graduate Research Assistant

Mike Guidry

Professor

Flash MX is arguably the most useful application development software package currently available for high-quality, Web-deliverable interactive animation in educational applications. The most powerful feature of Flash MX is the ability for users to develop their own Components. Flash MX Components are highly reusable objects extending the MovieClip class and incorporating Actionscript commands that permit look/feel and functionality to be modified through a user-friendly interface that does not require explicit programming. Thus, they permit the development of reusable Flash elements that can be extensively configured by non-programmer users (for example, by web designers or beginning students). We shall develop a tutorial that demonstrates by stepwise implementation of working examples how to create, install, and document Flash MX Components. The sum of what we propose to teach in this tutorial represents knowledge that we have developed in our own work and goes beyond any discussion of Component development yet available in either the Macromedia Flash MX documentation or the many books beginning to appear on Flash MX. However, it will be presented in such a way that it should be accessible to anyone having a basic familiarity with Flash and ActionScript.

The SWF vector graphic animation files exported by Macromedia Flash, with its most recent incarnation being Flash MX and the Flash 6 Player, may represent the most viewed class of software in the history of the planet. Macromedia estimates that nearly 98% of current Web users have the Flash Player installed, corresponding to some 400 million users worldwide of Flash technology. All browsers since the 4-level versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape ship with the Flash Player installed, and these Flash Players have been ported to Windows, Macintosh, various flavors of Unix, and Linux operating systems, as well as Pocket PC hand-held devices and cell phones.