Actionscript Cookbook

Chapter 25. Image Viewer/Slideshow

Loading images at runtime is a powerful feature of Flash, and it is not a particularly difficult skill to acquire. However, there remain several subtleties that practice and experience will help you to master. This chapter is devoted to the creation of an image viewer/slideshow application that highlights some of the following key skills:

• Loading JPEG content at runtime

• Monitoring the download of the content using a progress bar

• Loading XML data and using it to populate a UI component

• Extensive use of the drawing API

• Creating drag-and-drop functionality within a menu

• Using intervals to automate timed tasks

• Watching for keyboard activity

The application that you create in this chapter includes the following features:

• URLs to available images are loaded from an XML document.

• Each image has a title as well as a thumbnail, low resolution, and full image URL.

• The titles of available images are used to populate a list box.

• Users can preview the low-resolution images in a preview pane. Each preview image opens up in its own window that can be moved and resized within the preview pane.

• Users can add images to a sequence of thumbnails, the order of which can be rearranged by dragging and dropping the thumbnail images.

• The full versions of the images can be played back in the same order as the thumbnails.

Planning the Application Design

The first thing you should do when developing any application is formulate a blueprint. That is, you should decide what elements you need, ...