Digital Workshop

Hi, I am a newbie using Opus Pro EXE and trying to publish to flash.

I get the following two warnings:

1. Chapter 'Chapter 1' uses the following properties that cannot be exported to Macromedia Flash (SWF)

2. Resizing

For the life of me I cannot work out what this is refering to.

Can anyone help?

On the Chapter properties, you have selected the Resizing options.
Change the type back to Opus Professional temporarily, uncheck those options and then change the type back to Flex.

Hi Duncan

Many thanks for your help. My project now publishes to flash BUT!

I have written a number of functions to guide an image round the page in response to on-screen buttons. It works fine, but, although everything is on screen, and the buttons seem to work, my image does not respond in the flash version. Am I missing some other settings, or are my own functions causing the problem? I realise, that without seeing the code, this might be impossible to answer, but any further help would be much apreciated.

Check out the help file: Index - Opus Flex - List of Unsupported Features in Opus Flex. This may give a clue as to why some of your functions don't appear to work.

Regards

Roger

... serious scripting for Flex export is IMHO currently not possible. Since you cannot use such basic things like if clauses it is very hard to write useful code for Flex export.

T.

The Flex scripting is almost as powerful as normal OpusScript (barring scripting for things that don't work in Flash, like DocViews etc); and the if statement certainly works.

For an example of what can be achieved using scripting in Flex I would pinvite you to look at Sudoku Solitaire, written by me using purely scripting (including a custom drag and drop implementation).

If you have an older version of Opus there is a typo in the help that says "The for and if loop does not work in Flex." This is an error (since if is not a loop!) It refers to the JavaScript for/in construct - for example:

which will not work in Flex.

This typo has since been corrected.

... ist this a new information? We had a similar discussion a few weeks ago:

http://www.digitalgrapevine.info/viewtopic.php?t=1833&highlight=flex

The information I got there was that flex does not support if statements.

Maybe I have misunderstood something?

T.

... sorry, I did not notice this sentence.

T.

I have not yet had a chance to check out Duncan's example, but I will.

My functions are mostly a bunch of if statements checking out variables. I am also using arrays could this be a problem?

Is there any way of pining down the code causing my flash publication not to work?


Thanks for all the useful help so far.

Hi Duncan,
I misunderstood as well, so I have been avoiding Flex for years.

It's good to see that you dev's at DW made your Home page Banner with Flex.

cheers
Paul

Hi Duncan

I took a look at your 'Sudoku Solitaire', very impressive. It seems to have a number of flash include files (.as). Did opus generate these from you original code, or did you write these in action script as includes? It seems to me, that if it is neccessary to right action script to make my opus publication work I might as well write the whole thing in flash (not something I know how to do)

Continued thanks to you and others for help and info.

Are decompiling the SWF in some tool? This is not necessary (or appreciated - please note that Sudoku Solitaire is a commercial product of DonkeyWorx and should not be reverse engineered!). The .as files are the support by which Opus implements most of it's functionality in Flash. You do not need to access them.

The Opus publish can create Flash without any scripting on your part; the ActionScript is created by Opus during the publish process. However it is also possible to write script in Opus that will then become part of your Flash publication, should you need to extend the functionality.

Hi Duncan

No disrespect intended or intension to jeopardize copyright, just trying to find my way through the digital mist.

All the Flash Dev's I know, EXPECT their SWF's to be decompiled if they are going to be put online and plan accordingly -- that's the reality of working with Flash.
You make the trade off -- getting wider exposure versus the difficulty of protecting your property rights.

Decompilers are in wide use and some are getting VERY good; I use a good obfuscator now to stop casual script theft and re-use, although I can't protect much else if it's online.

Online game/quiz/educational SWF's used for demo purposes normally get their layouts from server side scripts when "new game/quiz" is requested, that's the only way to keep the vultures out.
Work through loader SWF's to stop casual extraction straight from the browser with some decompilers.
SWF files do not have to have an swf file extension either.

Most of the best Flash work is confined to LAN's, VPN's and CD/DVD because of these issues.

Flex produced SWF's have an advantage -- when decompiled, the scripts are much harder to understand than those from SWF's produced in Flash, and they don't recompile easily.

Paul