Well, I feel like I’m walking into a brain surgery symposium to get help opening a box of Band-Aids…I’ve tried pretty hard to find tutorials about this but no luck. Maybe I’m the densest person who’s ever dared to start up Flash. 
I’m making a scheduling utility for students in my online classes, and I went out and found a “Date Picker” component which looks nice. I’ve downloaded it, but I can’t get Flash CS4 to recognize it no matter what I do.
The picker came from Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.
First issue - there are a several different downloads. One contains only a file called Datepicker-v4.4.1.swc with a red envelope icon, the other is version 4.2 (I don’t really care which version I end up with).
The 4.2 yields a directory containing
AS3-DatePicker-v4.2.as3proj,
SWCSettings.lxml,
a png icon,
and five subdirectories:
\asset(some png graphics and a couple fonts)
\bin\AS3DateChooserv4.swf
\bin\as3-date-picker_4.1.swc
\bin\DatePicker.swf
\bin\expressInstall.swf
\bin\index.html
\bin\live_preview.swf
\bin\Flash IDE Component\DatePicker.swc
\bin\Flash IDE Component\Flash IDE Component v 4.2.zip
\bin\Flash IDE Component\Flash_IDE_Example.fla
\bin\Flash IDE Component\Flash_IDE_Example.swf
\bin\Flash IDE Component\property panel.png
\bin\Flash IDE Component\READ ME.TXT
\bin\js\swfobject.js
\lib weener.swc
\obj(13 .xml files with names like AS3-DatePicker-v4.1Config.xml)
\src\DatePicker.fla
\src\DatePicker_swc.fla
\src\live_preview.fla
\src\Main.as
\src\caurina(several subdirectories containing .as files)
\src
id(a maze of subdirectories containing .as files)
Sorry for the ugly information dump, but I have no idea what in there is important and what isn’t so trying to give you as complete a picture as possible.
The readme file says this is an “SWC component in Flash CS5”, not sure if that means it can’t work on CS4. It says…
copy “DatePicker.swc” to
C:\Documents and Settings(REPLACE USER NAME)\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\Flash CS5\en_US\Configuration\Components\
Close Flash IDE if already open
Open Flash IDE and check the Standard Componenets in Componenets Panel
drag and drop date picker in to stage
enjoy
I tried to do that, but my directory structure doesn’t correspond to that path very well. (I don’t have a Local Settings directory, first of all.)
Looking for something analogous on my WinXP/CS4 machine I ended up at C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash CS4\en\Configuration. That didn’t have a Components directory so I made one, dropped DatePicker.swc into it, and nothing seemed to happen. (By that I mean, I started Flash, created an AS3 Flash file and opened the components palette, and nothing DatePicker-like was there.)
If this is really stupidly simple could you tell me how to do it, or if it’s really stupidly complicated could you suggest some tutorials that I could check out?
Cheers,
JF
