Need halp with a drawing board

1

Hi Gurus,

I saw the drawing board tutorial posted by Ilyas at: http://www.kirupa.com/developer/actionscript/drawingboard.htm

I think it’s a great tool if utilized for relevant purposes. I am an instructional designer at a university and I already see a lot of applications for this tool in education. One thing I would like to use it for is to enable instructors and students of non Latin-based languages (like Chinese and Japanese for example) to be able to write on the screen. I just wish I could spice it up a little bit, but my AS skill level is not that great yet. Here are some of the things I would like to be able to do and any help, advice, suggestions, or even very general direction as for where to search for script will be tremendously appreciated.

  • I would love to be able to change the mouse shape to a pen instead
  • give the users more control over the pen color, stroke thickness, and background style. (I was thinking of a nested menu that stretches down when users mouse over it, then they can click on one of five or six stroke colors for example, and that activates a function that changes the pen color), a similar menu for stroke thickness, and maybe another menu with three or four choices of movie clips to be used as backgrounds (statistics, yellow ruled sheet, white ruled sheet, etc) Hope that makes sense.
  • It would be great if I could limit the writing to a certain area within the movie instead of the whole stage.
  • I would like to enable them to print the drawing area instead of the whole screen.
  • My pie in the sky is to enable them to email what they write to someone. Wouldn’t it be great if they could draw something in Japanese or Chinese and email it to their instructor!!??

I do realize that I may be asking for too much and that some of these things may not be doable in Flash AS. However, if you, or any of the gurus could help me with even one feature, I will highly appreciate it. If I get this tool to work the way I imagine (dream), I will most likely include it in my PhD portfolio and give you guys, and the Kirupa forum credit for it.

Thank you so much

Sawy