This week’s cooltopic:
Flash MX
Article by:The KROW   [page 1] [page 2] [page 3]

“Heading Out To See”

Okay, you’ve got your feet wet and now it’s time to head out to the deep end! Here we’re going to see what the Cold Fusion components look like from inside Flash MX!

First, a quick screen shot of the entire work space (your’s might be different simply depending on how you set your Preferences in Flash MX):

Flash MX Work Space

This set up is pretty much the Default, so you too will most likely see the Cold Fusion Drag and Drop components as soon as you open your Flash MX! Very cool...not to mention HANDY!! :-D

Now, let’s take a look at those CF components close up, then we’ll cover them in detail:

Flash MX Components

As you can see, the components are straight forward and exactly what you’re used to in Fusion. Here in Flash MX, the components work pretty much the same way... with one exception.... setting parameters is EASY in Flash MX!! You don’t have to type in any of that “value = blah blah blah”. Now, you certainly have that option (great for you “Regular Use” folks), but what’s so great now, is that you set the “parameters” (think of those as “choices”) of your components through easy-to-use popup screens. Let’s see how you actually work with the CF components now...

 Cool KROW Clue
If you already have Flash MX but haven’t had a chance to try it out much, this is a great time to follow along by using the “Quiz” template included with your Flash MX! And, if you don’t have Flash, don’t worry. You can still follow along and you’ll see just how easy these things are in new Flash!
:-)

“Do You See What I See?”

As previously mentioned, there are some ready-made templates and examples in new Flash you can use in your own sites. Just adjust them how you need and you’re done! Instant dynamic form, completely done in Flash and Cold Fusion (whoa)!

The form we’re looking at is a “User Quiz”. The whole quiz is already made for you. It includes “Directions”, text-entry boxes, check box choices, draggable image choices, and more. You just change the “Directions” or User Questions... or whatever you want, and you’re done (sure beats coding this stuff by hand)! Through a series of building instructions (for you) and popups (to set your “choices”) you can customize your Quiz form however you want.

In this Quiz, there is a section where the user must enter some text to provide their answer to the question:

Begin editing the form

Here, you can edit the actual text box (size, font, etc). But, let’s say you decide to get really fancy. You decide this answer should be multiple choice, not a typed text answer. But, you start to think twice about changing the form because you also start thinking about all that code and tweaking and uggh... just what a pain it will be just to change a text entry box to a few checkboxes!

Well, you can completely change your way of thinking now with new Flash MX!! All you need to do here is delete the text entry box, Drag and Drop which component(s) you want for your answer choices and then set the parameters of them! So, instead of the plain text entry box (above), your form starts changing the way *you* want it to look, such as:

Once you’ve dropped in what choice components you want, you simply launch the component parameters popup (see below). This is where you can create your question, set the text of your answer-choices, and even choose the color, font and so on of each answer. In other words, if you wanted the “correct” answer to be in another color as a “hint”, you can set it in the popup here. And, the popup is completely self-explanatory:

This popup is where you set up this question!
Too easy! :-)

So, once you finish setting your choices, you’d end up with a page that looks something like this:

You can easily tell which is the “correct” answer because I set the color of the check box with just the click of a button!
“Look Ma.... No coding!”

Remember, since this Quiz is already templated, I don’t need to go in and create entire sections for “check answers” and so on. These are already in the Quiz. All I need to do here is adjust the parameters (choices) to fit what I need in the Quiz!

“Rating That Film”
Hey! You’re paddling along quite well in the deep waters of this new Flash MX. You’re building a dynamic Quiz which is a great way to keep user interest and interaction at its highest. But, what good is collecting information if it doesn’t give you back any kind of report? Well then, it just becomes nothing more than a form with something to click on it! That’s a big “thumbs down”.

So, what if your Quiz could *really* give your users some good feedback. Not only as a “final grade” at the end of the Quiz, but during each question as well! Now *that* would be something! Let’s go check out just how that’s done in our Quiz....

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