SWF File question...PLEASE HELP

Question

I've been asked to edit a Flash web site. The page they want
me to edit has a form on it, but they only have the .swf file. I've
opened it in Flash and am able to make the required changes, but
they thing I wanted to know is will the form be affected if I then
re export it as a .swf file or will it still work as it did before?
Thanks for your help,
Lucy

Answer 1

Lucy4,
> The HTML file is for a seperate form on the site.
Okay. Sometimes people provide two versions ... a "jazzy"
Flash version
and a "plain vanilla" HTML version. If that form is a
different one
altogether, then the variables required by form-mail.pl might
have nothing
to do with the variables required by the script to which your
SWF must
submit. Until we know how form-mail.pl works, we simply don't
know what to
send to it.
It *might* be the case that form-mail.pl was written to
receive *any*
variables. You won't know until you try. Send whatever
variables you like
and see what comes out at the other end (whoever it is that
receives the
email sent by the Perl script).
Then again, it might be the case that form-mail.pl requires
a certain
set of variables. If those variables are different from the
ones you showed
me in that HTML form, you'll have to find out what those
variables are.
That only makes sense, right?
> So does that mean then that I don't need to add any
> additional code to the HTML page that the Flash
> form will be on?
An HTML page *could* have both an HTML form and a Flash
form, by why
would a developer do that? It would confuse people ... you
can already hear
them asking, "Which form should I fill out?" When a developer
produces two
versions, they're both completely separate. Some developers
like to provide
site visitors with a Flash version of the site and a
non-Flash version of
the site -- but they're never provided side-by-side on the
same HTML page.
Your Flash form has nothing to do with existing HTML on the
page --
other than the <object> and <embed> tags
necessary to embed the SWF in the
document. There shouldn't be a form on the SWF's HTML page at
all.
> Also I've added the following code to the submit button
> on the Flash file, but am not sure if it will work okay:
>
> on (release) {
> if (!realname.length) {
> EmailStatus = "Please Enter your name before Sending";
> }
This code might work and it might not. Without know what
it's supposed
to do, I can't answer the question.
First, you're checking of an
object, realname, has a length property greater than zero.
The way this is
written, you're coincidentally checking of the realname
object has a length
property at all. My question to you is, what sort of object
is realname?
Is it a String? Is it an Array?
My guess is that it's a String (after all the String class
does define a
String.length property), but if so, where is this string
coming from? Does
realname represent an input text field somewhere in your SWF?
If so, you
should probably be referencing that text field's
TextField.text property.
In other words, you presumably have an input text field in
your movie, and
that text field's instance name is realname. Since realname
is an instance
of the TextField class, you'll use the TextField.text
property to retrieve
the text inside that text field. And since TextField.text
returns a string,
you can use the expression realname.text in place of your
string in the
expression myString.length. Combined, that would be ...
if (realname.text.length == 0)
... or ...
if (!realname.text.length)
Does that make sense to you? If it doesn't, that's fine, but
it means
you need to familiarize yourself with what it means to use
objects in
ActionScript.
The next part ...
EmailStatus = "Please Enter your name before Sending";
... might mean something, too. But I have no idea what
EmailStatus is. Is
that a variable you'll be using later? There is no
EmailStatus entry in the
ActionScript Language Reference, so this must be something
you've defined or
written somewhere. Without that description from you, I have
no way of
telling you what EmailStatus is for -- or, for example, if it
can be set to
a String, as you've done here.
> loadVariablesNum ("snowMailPHP.php", "0", "Post");
> EmailStatus = "Sending...";
Now, this part may be fine. I don't know what
snowMail.PHP.php is.
Presumably, it's a form handler. If so, it's either a form
handler that can
handle exactly the variables you'll be sending or any
variables at all.
Your second parameter, "0", is incorrect. That needs to be a
Number, not a
String (see the loadVariablesNum entry of the ActionScript
Language
Reference for details).
David
stiller (at) quip (dot) net
Dev essays:
http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."