Digital Workshop

Hi

I'm working on a Flex publication in which I'm trying to figure out how to scale all objects on every page through one action at the beginning.

Authoring Flex/Flash for PDA's and Smartphones, there are numerous screen sizes, ranging from 80 X 100 to 240 X 320. Rather than trying to develop a separate version and screen size for each, and more that will come along over time, it would be better to be able to let the end-user set at least a few standard sizes using buttons or text input on the first page.

All objects can be set in a single frame on each page, so they can all be scaled (V and H) at once. However, I'm not sure, given Flex's limitation/inability to store in variables, how to set this up for all pages based on a choice on the first page. Flex can be a bit tricky in that what seems to run OK in preview may not work when published and opened in a Flash player in runtime.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Perhaps I am not understanding you or I am braindead, but couldn't you build to what you think is going to be the smallest screen resolution you have and then make sure the Chapter is set to resize and maintain its aspect? This way everything on the page maintains its "position" and the page can scale to any size you wish. The key would be to develop it such a way that it looked good at what you think is going to be the smallest resolution.

Or else I'm not understanding properly.

Hi

Thank you for your reply. Do you mean: build a few identical chapters, each with a different screen size, and let the viewer pick the size that best suits them?

I did some further experimenting with setting 2 text input boxes on the first page, one for a height variable and one for the a width variable. Then, using a pre-show trigger on a sample page and a script

framea.ScaleH(height)
framea.ScaleV(width)

"framea" with all page contents will scale to the factor that is entered into the 2 input boxes. And, it works in runtime in the Flash player! So, that's solved.

However, now I need to solve the text input issue. Since the scale factor script syntax works with numbers not percents (for example -.5 would scale to 50%), I would like to create a viewer-friendly input, in percents, rather than negative minus decimals: some sort of script to translate -.5 or -.2 to 50% and 80%).

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Kind Regards,

I was talking about setting your chapter to the smallest size you think you will need to run on, let's say 320x140, and then creating all your content for that size, but setting the Chapter to be resizeable so that if you run in say 520x240, the publication scales up to size accordingly and maintains its aspect ratio. The settings are on Chapter dialog box.

Hi

OK, now I understand. I haven't used this much before. So, I'm not sure which boxes to check or uncheck on the Publication or Chapter properties to get this to work.

I tried, using a 160 X 160 minimalist window size. No matter what combination of checks/unchecks, I kept getting a little window on a bigger screen, on my desktop or even if I transfered the publsihed Flash file to my PDA. So, I'm not very knowledgeable about setting this up.

I'll attach a small sample .imp. I would appreciate if you could check the right boxes to get a re-sizable 160 X 160 screen.

Thanks for your help.

Kind Regards,

Here you go.

Hi

I appreciate your help.

I may still try the scale/resizing approach, since using a minimal size screen and then re-sizing larger produces text that some may find less attractive on a PDA than text which is reduced from larger. But, scaling may prove impossible.

Again, thanks.

Kind Regards,