Flash AS3: Setting text dynamically over multiple button states

Hey BG good to hear from you.

Yes, the MovieClip I'm referring to is the one that would become the button instance, and would be the one containing a named textfield. Note that this is not a SimpleButton component, just a MovieClip with no internal logic.

So my controller class, once the appropriate MouseEvent is dispatched, would simply change visual button states by advancing the MovieClip to the appropriately labeled frame.

// my controller class in this example is really simple, to illustrate the issue:
 
package {
	
	import flash.display.*;
	import flash.events.*;
 
	public class MouseOverTest extends MovieClip {
		
		private var buttonOne:MovieClip;
		private var buttonTwo:MovieClip;
		
		public function MouseOverTest(){
			buttonOne = btnOne;
			buttonTwo = btnTwo;
			
			for (var i in { One:'', Two:'' }){
				var button:MovieClip = this["button" + i];
				button.stop();
				button.buttonMode = true;
				
				button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.ROLL_OVER, onMouseOver);
				button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.ROLL_OUT, onMouseOut);
			}
 
// these next lines are part of a test I was doing to illustrate
// the mouseChildren + dynamic TextField issue
// which is how I stumbled upon this problem
			
			buttonOne.localText.text = "mouseChildren = true";
			buttonOne.mouseChildren = true;
			
			buttonTwo.localText.text = "mouseChildren = false";
			buttonTwo.mouseChildren = false;
		}
		
		private function onMouseOver(event:MouseEvent):void {
			event.currentTarget.gotoAndStop("on");
		}
		
		private function onMouseOut(event:MouseEvent):void {
			event.currentTarget.gotoAndStop("off");
		}
	}
}

                                              

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Oh I should point out that I am automatically declaring stage instances, but the reason I reassign the stage MCs to a private variable is just to enable code hinting in FlashDevelop.

T

Anything, BG? I eagerly await your response...

hey sorry i did forget about you. I can't remember what we were doing.

movieclip

frame1 to simulate up state - has text field instance - //how is the designer manipulating the text?
frame2 to simulate over state - has a different text field instance ?

and then you just want to stick some text into it?

The Problem:
When your AS class then sets the textfield.text value in frame 1 of the MovieClip, the other button states continue to display the original text.

My Question:
Why are you setting the text in frame 1 of the movieclip?

in AS3 best practise you should either create a class for you movieclip, or handle the stuff on the timeline.

then when you do the over/out states set the text there.
do the goto first then set the text, otherwise you'll get a null reference error.

let me know how that goes.

Hi Blue Genie, thanks for picking up the ball with this question.

To answer your question first, I think I was not clear with my description. There is no frame-based actionscript at all. The movie clip belongs to a class that has a "localizeText()" method on it that is called by the view once it instantiates. What I meant when I said "on frame 1" was that the textField which was created at design time in the Flash IDE is on frame 1 of the movieclip's timeline.

When the movieclip instantiates on the display list, it reads in the localized text from an XML file and displays that text in the appropriate language inside the button.

The problem is that the designer has done things to the text like change the colour or changed the font, so while the textfield is technically the same instance of the textfield, because there's a keyframe for the rollover state, Flash replaces the text that was put in there through ActionScript when the movieclip first initialized.

There are a few techniques out there that substitute the text when you gotoAndStop() the rollover frame label, but that usually causes a bit of a flicker.

My problem is that I don't want to have to reproduce what the designer implemented in the IDE through AS - I would like the designer to be able to freely use the IDE to create whatever design they want and then just control the localization one time when the class instantiates.

I'm going to request this question be closed and points refunded unless there's still interest in understanding my question and providing a response, as my research indicates that this is just a limitation of the way textfields work.

It really only affects specific font styling issues, and they can all be reproduced fairly easily in AS. It's unfortunate because it means the the developer must re-create what the designer has already re-created, but if the developer and designer agree to use an external CSS stylesheet as the intermediary, then it should be a viable workflow, albeit slightly less efficient than it could be were this not an issue.

Thanks, BG for your interest in the question, though I'm not sure you were really on track with what I was asking. If you or anyone else have suggestions worthy of consideration, please post them here. I will keep the question open for 3 more days.

See you around on EE,

T

Not that you need the points,  BG, but I won't get them back so thanks for participating!

if you close your question you get your points back don't you.