Dynamic Text/Clip Sizing & Crating Tables

programming flash
1

I am new to Flash MX & 2004 and I’ve been having some real problems with some, I imagine, simple questions.

  1. Dynamically resizing screen elements to fit dynamic text: I’ve been loading data into Flash via XML files and dynamically populating Movie Clips with the data. How can I make the movie clip expand to match the size of the data loaded? Maybe there’s a different approach to this as well?

  2. Stacking Movie Clips: When I load data into movie clip elements, I’d like to be able to stack them, one on top of the other, i.e. creating a table and filling the cells with the data elements. How do you tell Flash to start the next movie based on the lower left corner of the previous clip? How about if they were dynamically sized?

I don’t ask for much do I?

Also, I’m in the Chicago, IL area and I’m looking for a tutor. If there’s anyone here I can talk to please feel free to PM or e-mail me. I would, of course, be willing to pay your training time.

Thank you in advance for your help. I’ll be looking forward to hearing more.

2

Hi,

  1. Textfield have height and width properties. All you have to do is get them when the data is loaded, and resize your clip accordingly.
  2. There’s a grid tutorial that show how to place clips in a grid format. It might help you.

pom :slight_smile:

3

Pom:

Thanks for the reply.

I understand that there are parms that allow for changing the text box, but I’m hoping that there’s something more programmatic based on the size of the text delivered. As in, using the font size, character count, etc. or something like that to dynamically change the text area. I guess I’m just spoiled by other technologies that do this automatically. Do you know of a formula, set of steps, etc. to achieve this?

And…I’ll check out that tutorial.

Thanks,

-L

4

Look up the [font=courier new]TextField.autoSize[/font] property in the ActionScript Dictionary, it might help. :slight_smile:

5

Ok! Thanks for your help! The .autoSize is working fine, but how about stacking up the results? I haven’t been able to find the height and width properties for the text box. How would that work?

-Leo

6

[font=courier new]TextField._width[/font] and [font=courier new]TextField._height[/font]. :wink: