Dowhile document opens

1

I’m using Flash to create an interface that links to various Word, PowerPoint, and PDF’s (that open in a new window). However some documents are quite large, and take several seconds to open. How can I tell the user that the document is opening, and not to KEEP CLICKING THE LINK!!?? Can I have something akin to the hourglass pop up? Is this a dowhile function? Any advice.

Thanks

2

getting the download progress from another browser window sounds a little complicated to me.

what you might do instead is disable the button for however long.

here’s one method of doing that. make a testing movie in _root, call it “test”. we’ll toggle that button’s visiblilty in the example.

on your button, you add a few lines to disable the button, and re-enable it a little later:

  
on(release){
_ _ _ _ // toggle test's visiblility
_ _ _ _ _root.test._visible = !_root.test._visible;
_ _ _ _ this.myButton.enabled = 0;
_ _ _ _ this.myButton.timeOut = setInterval(_root.reEnable,1000,this.myButton);
}

the setInterval arguments are; the function to call, how often to call it, and any arguments you want to pass to that function. in this case, we’re calling _root.reEnable every second (1000 milliseconds, you’ll probably wnat to make that longer) and passing it the a reference to the button which we’ve disabled (which also contains the handler for the setInterval).

and we’ll need to write that reEnable function that we called:

  
function reEnable(button){
_ _ _ _ trace("cleared "+button+"'s interval!")
_ _ _ _ button.enabled = 1;
_ _ _ _ clearInterval(button.timeOut);
}

pretty straightforward, it re-enables the button, and clears the setInterval using the handler we defined. handy how each button can contain it’s own handler, eh? no overlaps.

  • edit*

oh yeah, you’ll need to name your buttons too, in the above example, i’ve named the button “myButton”.

3

Hey Supra, this is the Flash 5 forum !! Not Flash MX. Apart from that, I don’t know how that setInterval function works, but isn’t it strange that you call setInterval(_root.reEnable,1000,this.myButton) and then define function reEnable(button). Where has the 1000 gone ?

pom 0]

4

actually, ily, this is the actionscripting forum. ; )

the 1000 defines how often the function will be called until it’s cleared. since the function clears itself, it only runs once. in this case, it’s more of a delay than an interval.

5

Oh, I see…

pom 0]

6

thanks all.