I think I'm getting allergic to Flash, these things below I thought were bugs (having come across so many the last time I used it) but they aren't, they are just hmmm Fridays?
(Im using CS3 Flash, Stand Alone Flash Player 8 authored projectors (see my other flash posts as to why) on mac OS 10 something, so the projectors are Flash Player 8.
HYPERLINKS DON'T WORK WHEN I TEST MY FLASH PROJECTOR
If your publishing to Flash Player 9 read this, and the comments:
I'm publishing my projector to Flash Player 8 to avoid various bugs but my hyperlinks weren't working and it was because of one thing (i think although it has been doing it what seems like randomly although I'm not sure at this hour anymore...)
The thing I think was the main problem... itchy trigger finger for annoying dialogue boxes.
If your like me, impatient, when you see an OS type dialogue box popup asking you this or that about something usually you don't care about, you just lunge at the OK button instantly without reading it to get it out of the way. It been ages since I've actually CAREFULLY read popup dialogue boxes, I did that back when I though every time I pressed a button on a computer I was going to break it.
The first time I opened my Flash projector, when I clicked on a hyperlink, it was throwing up the Flash Player Security Warning dialogue box, saying something like 'potentially unsfae opperation blah blah' to which I clicked OK before reading.
Doing that, the dialogue box closed, and my hyperlinks no longer worked! What got me was I think I opened an OLD project to see if the getURL had EVER worked, and it seemed to be broken too... WHAT THE.
I think what was happening was that the security settings dialogue box OK had disallowed the getURL, no matter what file I opened. What I had to do was not click OK but click "settings" when the dialogue box opens, and this seems to fix it.... the links magically were working today, because I had quit the flash player in between reopening it, which is what you are supposed to do if you read the dialogue box CAREFULLY.
Still, I think this is wacky behaviour, and i its tripping me up its most likely to do the same to the users of the CDROM, unless they are the dialogue box reading type... but they shouldn't have to be... I design for the lowest common denominator and we can't expect everyone to be of the diligent dialogue box reading type.
UPDATE: vague memory now but actually, I think i was testing the swf, not the projector. The version on the CDROM will be the projector. It has to do with flash player settings being eithier local access only or something, and these settings DONT apply when its published as a projector, because flash assumes that if you have clicked on an application (projector) you give permission for it to do its stuff, so the security stuff dosnt kick in at all.
MAKING HYPERLINKS FROM TEXT IN FLASH
Also a big huge stupid gotya when making hyperlinks in flash from text, and you want to make one just like in dreamweaver or any other WSIWUG editor where you simply select the text (highlight it) and then go down to the URL/link field and write the URL you want that text to be a link to.
Thing is, I couldn't see this option in Flash, anywhere. Then I googled it, and in an online book it described very simply how to make a hyperlink, using the URL/link field. So I search my windows and so on in Flash and there seems to be no field like this that exists!! Am I going CRAZY!!?? No....
I'm working on a laptop screen and my "properties" window was minimised but I didn't know it. So the URL input field was nowhere to be seen! I was all about to go through the text link by link and convert them all into buttons which had getURL calls on the (a hassle to change the text for the next round of client revisions) because I assumed that was going to be the only way to make a hyperlink. (It IS the only way to get a rollover colour, although there might be a dynamic text and CSS way but I havn't used that before)
But no, there is the easy way as shown in the online book, just just use the link field, which I found when I maximised the properties window...
This is my properties window at the default size on my screen...
As you can see there is no indication that anything might be missing from this Properties Window display, or that it has been minimised... you can see the URL field with the chain link icon next to it below when you expand the window vertically. HURRAH.
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