Question

Displaying a text file

Asked by: klompen

Hi,

If anyone can help me, please.

I need to know how to display a text file in a flash animation.

After the SWF loaded it will read a text file, "message.txt", and then displayed on the stage.

Thanks.

This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.

Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get

Instant Access to this Solution

  • Plus...
  • 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
  • Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
  • Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
  • Never be left without tech help again

Subscribe Now

Asked On
2003-08-24 at 06:19:32ID20718452
Topics

Adobe Flash

,

Server Side Includes (SSI)

Participating Experts
3
Points
60
Comments
12

Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.

  • "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
  • "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
  • "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.

See what Experts Exchange can do for you.

Got a question?

We've got the answer.

Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Need individual assistance?

Our experts are ready to help.

If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Want to learn from the best?

Read articles from industry experts.

Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.

Screenshot of an Article

Working on a long term project?

Store your work and research.

Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Access the answers to your technology questions today.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?

Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Trusted by the world's most respected brands.

image of each brand's logo

Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.

Experts Exchange Logo

Try it out and discover for yourself.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

Related Solutions

  1. Limit stage size on flash animation
    My graphic designer would like to know how she can limit the stage size. As seen from the link below, the animation overflows past the X button. How can I enclose the animation - I don't want the animation to flow past the X button. It should be in a square. If you notice ...
  2. Can I display an animated gif in flash 8?
    Hello guys/gals. I'm trying to help out a friend of mine display some images in flash 8 and i'm of the impression that an animated gif will NOT play in the flash movie. is that correct? what i'm doing is using the loader component to display the gif from another website us...
  3. Flash library images not displaying on stage
    Hi I'm working with a Flash CS3 file that I created a while ago. I published the finished movie and that looks as it should. However, when I go back to the most recent fla before I published the swf, some segments of keyframes and tweens on the timeline don't display on...

Free Tech Articles

  1. WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
    It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
  2. SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
    SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
  3. Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
    This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
  4. Create a Win7 Gadget
    This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
  5. Outlook continually prompting for username and password
    There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
  6. Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
    There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...

Cloud Class Webinars

  1. Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
    Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
  2. Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
    Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
  3. IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
    Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
  4. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
    Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
  5. Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
    Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
  6. How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
    Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...

Join the Community

Give a Little. Get a Lot.

Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.

Join the Community

Answers

 

by: XenophonPosted on 2003-08-24 at 06:40:38ID: 9211784

In the text file: make the whole file a variable i.e

loadtext=This is the content of the textfile that I want loaded.... blah blah blah

In your flash frame:

function loadfile()
{
var fileVar = new loadVars();
fileVar.onLoad = dostuffwithfile;
fileVar.load("message.txt");
}
function dostuffwithfile()
{
trace(this.loadtext);
}
loadfile();

If you have any trouble please look up the loadVars object in the Flash actionscript dictionary (F1), as this is off the top of my head :S

hth
-X

 

by: kanaryPosted on 2003-08-24 at 13:10:33ID: 9212829

with addition to Xenophon  precious info, the text file data should be on the form:

var1=value1&var2=value2&var3=value3&and so on...

kanary.

 

by: XenophonPosted on 2003-08-24 at 18:19:54ID: 9213536

kanary,
   I think he just wants to load a textfile directly; but yes, thanks for pointing that out :)
later
-X

 

by: kanaryPosted on 2003-08-24 at 22:57:05ID: 9214292

:)

and if u want to display the content of the text file, u should create a dynamic text and load the data into it.

create an empty dynamic text box, name  it "Data" for example, then in the function above:

function dostuffwithfile()
{
Data.text=fileVar.var1;
}

//assuming u out write in the text file: var1=value1&var2=value2.


waiting ur comments klompen.

 

by: klompenPosted on 2003-08-24 at 23:56:41ID: 9214484

Hi,

So, the text file should use 'specific' format.

I think it would be better to use XML ... ?

<message>
content
   of the text ...
</messaged>

Because if using LoadVars() format it will be difficult to explain to the user.

What do you think?

 

by: kanaryPosted on 2003-08-24 at 23:59:35ID: 9214491

and why do u expect that using XML will be simpler code :))

it's ur choice to choose if ur source is xml or txt file, no matter how it's written in flash. both will be systematic afterwards.

 

by: XenophonPosted on 2003-08-25 at 00:27:21ID: 9214579

If it's just one string, then the user should have no trouble editing a file like this:

message.txt
---------------

data=I am a luser... blah blah

If he/she can't hack that, ask him/her to throw his/her computer(s) outta his/her window :P

-X

 

by: klompenPosted on 2003-08-25 at 06:41:40ID: 9216082

If using LoadVars(), how can I have multiple line text ?

First of all, what I really want to do is, I created a flash movie which read a "text" from file, and display the text in that movie.
So, next time I just simply edit the text, instead of edit the flash.

The text can be long, one or two paragraph.

I dont know about LoadVars() in the begining, but then I noticed that we need to add + for space and & for line termination. So I found that XML could be a lot of easier. Until now.

 

by: dutchfoxerPosted on 2003-08-25 at 08:02:49ID: 9216625

If your text has multiple lines...... then you could use HTML in the text that is in the text-file. The multi-line dynamic text should render the text as HTML (activate this option in text-properties)

Example:
&mytext=This is the first line.<br><br>This is the second line.&

Or have multiple lines in the text file and have 2 or 3 variables in flash:
&mytextline1=This is the first line.&
&mytextline2=This is the second line.&


A nice tutorial on flash using XML as input can be found here (including advice on when to and when not to use XML):
http://www.actionscript.org/tutorials/intermediate/XML/index.shtml

 

by: XenophonPosted on 2003-08-25 at 09:55:27ID: 9217533

//Also try this:
function loadfile()
{
var fileVar = new loadVars();
fileVar.onLoad = dostuffwithfile;
fileVar.load("message.txt");
}
function dostuffwithfile()
{
_root.strings_array = this.loadtext.split("\r\n"); //<--- Function splits string based on CRLFs...
trace(_root.strings_array);
}
loadfile();

hth
-X

20120131-EE-VQP-002

3 Ways to Join

30-Day Free Trial

The Experts

98% positive feedback on 31,087 answers since March 2000. angeliii is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with MS SQL Server & Develoment.

He has also proven his knowledge of Visual Basic Programming, PHP Scripting and Oracle Databases.

The Experts

97% positive feedback on 10,752 answers since July 2000. lrmoore has more than 18 years experience in the networking industry.

The six-time Mircosoft MVPs specialties include firewalls, virtual private networking, and network management.

Testimonials

"...and excellent source for support... Kind of like having your very own IT dept." Electriciansnet

Testimonials

"I was apprehensive at signing up at first. However... it has already made my life as an IT administrator much easier." JaCrews

Testimonials

"WOW! You guys have great, active, and knowledgeable people on here." moore50

Business Clients

Business Clients

In the Press

"If you’ve got a question... Experts Exchange can supply an answer.”

In the Press

"...an invaluable aid for both IT professionals and those who require tech support."

In the Press

"where IT professionals provide quick answers on just about any topic"

Business Account Plans

Loading Advertisement...