Well, after running my web page for some years the need to rewrite it causes a lot of mental pain. Migrating from AS2 to AS3 is a big time killer for me, so currently I get troubled by the following problem.
In general I need to present my portfolio (images) in a pretty simple way. There are a few categories with different images. Text buttons will enable you to switch between different sets of thumbnails. Switching will fade out the old thumbnails and blend in/scale in the new ones. Pressing a thumbnail will be blend in the full image.
All code is in one frame on the time line. All categories, thumbnails and images will be created dynamically via xml files. Text and thumbnails are based on extended sprite classes, while all of them are kept/nested within another sprite.
Blending in/out the container sprite is no problem. But there is currently no way way for me to get hold of a thumbnail or text sprite in order to change the text or change the properties (alpha, scale).
I thought by using the .name= convention I could address the thumb directly. But neither thumbnailName nor a gallery.thumbnailName reference will give me access. Using a direct name like “thumbnailOctopus” will spit out a 1120: error as the variable/object isn’t created directly in the var region of my code, as the name is still hidden in a xml file before execution.
Classes seem to be great for adding stuff like onMouseEvent. But if the event is triggered by changing a categorie, I can’t add this event listener directly to the thumbnail sprite like the mouseEvent stuff.
Apart from a solution to address the dynamically created and nested sprites, do I change the alpha, position, scale etc. via tweens from my .fla directly or do I create a custom event in the .fla that triggers the fade/scale event in my thumbnail by calling a function within the .as by passing forward variables for blending duration etc?
Although I’m used to programming since 1986, Adobe makes it really hard to stay on track with all these changes in the past.
I hope to get some input from you guys since I struggled the whole day without getting any further. :diss:
Cheers
Pancho
