Once I was in this same situation when I found that:

1. When you use export to FLV the codecs used support only even numbers for dimensions;
2. In fact, VP6 codec and some others suffer when their dimensions aren’t divisible by 16;
3. This causes the resultant FLV to have grey lines on top and bottom or on the left and right side;
4. You should keep that in mind and will have to make videos (that you’ll convert to FLV) using even numbers for their dimensions or …
5. Make your videos the desired dimensions and then convert them to F4V with Sorenson H.264 codec and keep their dimensions intact (but it’s better to use even numbers: divisable by 16 for the width and divisable by 8 for the height!).

Hope these lessons help you make your life easier when working with FLV. Good luck!

I had exactly the same problem recently and found what causes it. Actually when you have a dynamic text field with checked Auto Kern and/or using Letter Spacing other than 0, immediately after you assign any value to the “text” property of the text field the field just “disappears”. So if you want to use auto kerning and/or letter spacing with dynamic text fields and plan to export the flash movie for Flash Player 8, you’d better use the TextFormat’s property “letterSpacing” and “kerning” (set to “true” for Auto Kerning)  like in the example:

var tf:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
 
tf.kerning = true;
 
tf.letterSpacing = 2;
 
myTextField.setNewTextFormat(tf);
 
myTextField.text = "Here goes the text";

Here are some hints on:

• How to name armature layer – First, you can’t name the layer if it is locked. Second, you can’t use spaces (use underscore “_” instead) in the name and can’t use reserved words for a name.
• How to Copy/Paste a Pose – The layer should be unlocked. Using right click on the frame with the pose to be copied, choose Copy Pose. Then go to the desired frame where you want to paste the Pose, right click and choose Insert Pose, then another click with the right mouse button and choose Paste Pose.

to be continued…

this.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, cpF1);
this.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, cpF2);
 
function cpF1(e:Event):void{
trace("cpF1")
}
function cpF2(e:Event):void{
trace("cpF2")
}

Don’t expect to have traces like “cpF2″ only. You’ll have “cpF1 cpF2″ traced on every frame. This is a very hard to find mistake, if you expect an object to have only one onEnterFrame listener but you add another.

Have you ever seen this error, when trying to move your fla from ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3:

“Location: tempInit, Line 2   Description: 1086: Syntax error: expecting semicolon before line.”

In my case the problem was that I had a movieclip with a Linkage identifier in my ActionScript 2 file that contained space in the name. When I moved to ActionScript 3 all my Linkage identifiers were converted to class names and when I tried to compile my AS3 flash file I got this error above.

So be careful when you name your linkage identifiers. Better use “camel case” instead of using spaces. This will help you move your ActionScript 2 fla file to ActionScript 3 fla file without seeing this error.

Happy coding!

In a comment on my previous post [AS3] Skinning Flash Components I was asked to show how to change the size of the thumb of the Slider component. After some experiments with the component here is the way it can be done:

import fl.controls.Slider;
 
var s:Slider = new Slider();
s.move(10,10);
s.setSize(500,300);
/*s.setStyle("thumbUpSkin", SliderThumbCustomSkin);
s.setStyle("thumbDownSkin", SliderThumbCustomSkin);
s.setStyle("thumbOverSkin", SliderThumbCustomSkin);*/
s.maximum = 100;
s.minimum = 0;
s.tickInterval = 5;
addChild(s);
s.getChildAt(1).width = 50;
s.getChildAt(1).height = 100;

With the code above I found that the thumb of the Slider component is positioned at index 1 and can be reached by s.getChildAt(1) (where s is the instance of the Slider component). Then you can easily change its properties like Width, Height, etc.

Here is the list of the styles that can be used for skinning a Slider component:

Slider component styles

sliderTrackDisabledSkin

sliderTrackSkin

thumbDisabledSkin

thumbDownSkin

thumbOverSkin

thumbUpSkin

tickSkin

As you can see in the flash demo below, in Flash player 10 the  left image has strange artifacts while in the right image there are no artifacts.

I used Alpha: 99% for the Movie clip with the PNG and the artifacts were gone. I’m not sure what causes the artifacts in FP10 and if this solution is the right one, but it worked for me.

Here is the demo flash:

(Please open the article to see the flash file or player.)

This is the code that I use for scaling:

var testTxt:TextField = btn.getChildByName("labelTxt") as
TextField;
testTxt.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
testTxt.text = "SCALE SPRITE+TXT";
testTxt.x = 4;
 
var bg:Sprite = btn.getChildByName("bg") as Sprite;
bg.width = testTxt.width + 8;
 
var orig:Sprite = new Test();
var txt:TextField = orig.getChildByName("labelTxt") as TextField;
txt.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
txt.text = "SCALE SPRITE+TXT";
txt.x = 4;
var bg2:Sprite = orig.getChildByName("bg") as Sprite;
bg2.width = txt.width + 8;
orig.x = btn.x;
orig.y = btn.y + btn.height + 4;
 
addChild(orig);
 
btn.scaleX = 100/btn.width;

And THE SOLUTION is to use GridFitType.NONE for the gridFitType property of the TextField. The default value of the gridFitType property is GridFitType.PIXEL, which forces the text field to position according to the grid.

1. the name of the style and
2. your class that you want to use as the skin.

Here is the list of the styles that can be used for skinning a component:

ComboBox component styles

cellRenderer

disabledSkin

downArrowDisabledSkin

downArrowDownSkin

downArrowOverSkin

downArrowUpSkin

downSkin

thumbArrowUpSkin

thumbDisabledSkin

thumbDownSkin

thumbIcon

thumbOverSkin

trackDisabledSkin

trackDownSkin

trackUpSkin

upArrowDisabledSkin

upArrowOverSkin

upArrowUpSkin

upSkin

Information for any of the above styles of the ComboBox component can be found in the Flash Help for the ComboBox class.

The code for skinning is:

myComboBox.setStyle("upArrowUpSkin", CustomUpArrowUpSkin);

Where CustomUpArowUpSkin is the class of your custom upArrow skin for Up state of the up arrow button.

to be continued…