Customizing Flash Paper 2 with Actionscript 2.0 (AS2)

Last Updated on Thursday, 01 October 2009 20:53 Written by Nicholas Dunbar

recently I set out to customize flash papers using actionscript.

There is a lot of info on the web the best pages being:

http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flashpaper/2/flashpaper_api/


But they don't include very many examples of how to use the API. Here are a few

things I figured out how to do. First things first you need to properly load the

flash paper into your parent swf:

function loadFlashPaper(path_s, dest_mc) {
 var intervalID = 0;
 var loadFunc = function () {
  dest_mc._visible = false;
  var fp = dest_mc.getIFlashPaper();
  if (!fp) { 
   //is not a flash paper and does not contain a valid flash paper API
   return;
  }
  dest_mc._visible = true;
  clearInterval(intervalID);
 };
 intervalID = setInterval(loadFunc, 100);
 dest_mc.loadMovie(path_s);
}

once its loaded you can do a variety of things.

Use a listner to use my own font for the zoom percentage text:

var fp = holder_mc.getIFlashPaper();
var zoomNotifier:Object = new Object();
zoomNotifier.onZoomChanged = function(percent:Number):Void {
 percent = Math.round(percent);
 zoom_mc.zoom_txt.text = percent+"%";
};
fp.addListener(zoomNotifier);

zoom_mc is my own custom movie that is controlled by the flash paper API listner,

you can use the available listners to customize most any part of the UI.

Remove that flash paper logo that links to adobes web site:

holder_mc.toolbar_mc.brandClip_mc._visible = false;

Remove the tool bar completely so that you can rebuild it in your own image:

holder_mc.toolbar_mc._visible = false;

or disable different parts of the tool bar:

fp.showUIElement("Tool", false);
fp.showUIElement("Find", false);
fp.showUIElement("Pop", false);
fp.showUIElement("Overflow", false);

if you are having focus issues when using multiple flash papers in the same

window you can use code like this in each flash paper container and just trigger

focused to true or false when one is clicked or rolled over.

The lastScrollValue var is to keep the enableScrolling from being called every loop.

You could use an interval here but I like using movies because they unload

themselves once they are moved off stage.

this.createEmptyMovieClip("looper_mc", this.getNextHighestDepth());
focused_bl = true;
lastScrollValue_bl = true;
looper_mc.onEnterFrame = function() {
 if (!focused_bl && lastScrollValue_bl) {
  fp.enableScrolling(false);
  lastScrollValue_bl = false;
 } else if (focused_bl && !lastScrollValue_bl) {
  fp.enableScrolling(true);
  lastScrollValue_bl = true;
 }
};

Controlling the scroll bars and the viewable area inside the flash paper.

If have a document that you want to make zoom in on a certain area using

actionscript you need to use the getVisibleArea() object.

here is an example:

visArea_obj = new Object();
visArea_obj = fp.getVisibleArea();
//fnExtractObjVars(visArea_obj);
visArea_obj.x = 97.37;
visArea_obj.y = 82.677;
visArea_obj.w = 620.47;
visArea_obj.h = 285.03;
visArea_obj.s = 0;
fp.setVisibleArea(visArea_obj);

Now you might ask what is this commented out fnExtractObjVars?

In the white papers for the flash paper 2 API they don't really cover the ins and outs

of the returned object so did an object dump to determine what is inside so that I

could manipulate the variable. My advice is to load the flash paper with its working

tool bar and everything and zoom to the location you want and position the page

how you want by hand then have fnExtractObjVars tied to a button and trace out

all the values you need then go back and put them into actionscript. The function

fnExtractObjVars goes like the following:

function fnExtractObjVars(theObj:Object) {
 for (var i in theObj) {
  fnErrorMessage(i+" : "+theObj[i]);
 }
}

Finally something I found that I couldn't do. You might want to know about using

action script to load things into the actual tool bar. This is somewhat of a mystery

for me because I spent many hours trying to go in and load movies in dynamically.

I used code like this:

holder_mc.toolbar_mc.createEmptyMovieClip(

"coverholder_mc",

holder_mc.toolbar_mc.getNextHighestDepth()

);
this.holder_mc.toolbar_mc.attachMovie(

"Fcover",

 "brandClip_mc",

this.holder_mc.toolbar_mc.brandClip_mc.getDepth()

);

so if you are attempting such things and finding your objects not being created inside

of the flash paper document hierarchy then you are not alone. If you have found a

way to do this than please do share with us. but when I would run debug they

never showed up. They loaded fine anywhere outside of the flash paper but it was

as if Macromedia had locked everything from being messed with.

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These are problems with the exporter they cannot be fixed by hacking flash paper with as2. You have to adjust the doc to get the right look sometimes. Also sometimes word 2007 does not export correctly. Slow scrolling could have to do with the complexity of your content and the time that it takes to render. Have you tried scribed or acrobat. Flash paper is an old and now unsupported technology which is too bad because I thought it was very useful for loading in content into my Flash applications. Best of luck to you, -Nicholas

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January 05, 2010 | url
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Pimager said:

	Hello, could you tell me what is "holder_mc"? thank you
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February 23, 2010
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Nicholas said:

	holder_mc is the container into which the Flash Paper has been loaded.
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February 27, 2010 | url
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Pimager said:

	Thank you Nicholas
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February 28, 2010
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Dmitriy said:

	Nicholas, thx a lot for interesting and useful information! it's really helps me! but i've one more question - can i change a language of tips to my native?
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July 06, 2010
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Nicholas said:

	sorry man I have no idea without digging into it and I have moved on to being focused on other things, I suggest using the flash debugger and using the object browser to see if you can find the source of the data.
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July 12, 2010 | url
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Richard Rambarran said:

	Hello Nicholas, I am looking for a site/shop that sells Flash Paper for a project that currently uses Flash Paper and has no intention of changing. Do you know where I can buy Flash Paper? Also, has there been a suitable replacement for Flash Paper? Thank You Richard
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August 19, 2010 | url
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nicholas said:

	Flash paper was developed by Macromedia as a competing product to Adobe Acrobat. When Adobe bought Macromedia they discontinued Flash Paper. Too bad flash paper was a slimmed down version of Acrobat and loaded way faster. Try Ebay or Bit Torrent.
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September 01, 2010 | url
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omar said:

	Nicholas Awesome article - really helped me I wanted to something: can I create a Flash Paper document and then afterwards add animation/interactivity or even video to specific pages? That would be awesome if I could do Let me know what you think Thanks Omar
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December 14, 2010
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nicholas said:

	Sorry flash paper does not support embedded content as far as I know. If you are going to do this kind of thing I suggest building your own template.
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December 15, 2010 | url
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Write comment

	Hello Nicholas, I have word document, and i want to convert it into flash paper document. it is working but i am facing two problem after it conversion. 1. margin is not same as word document 2. Bullet is changed 3. scroll bar is not scrolling smoothly plz help me. thanx in advance. Amar Singh
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