Adobe Flash Professional CS6 Adobe Flash Professional CS6 Classroom In A Book | Page 355
Loading external Content
You’ll use ActionScript to load each of the external SWFs into your main Flash
movie. Loading external content keeps your overall project in separate modules
and prevents the project from becoming too bloated and difficult to download. It
also makes it easier for you to edit, because you can edit individual sections instead
of one, large, unwieldy file.
For example, if you wanted to change the article on the new car in the second
section, you would simply open and edit the Flash file page2.fla, which contains
that content.
To load the external files, you’ll use two ActionScript objects: one called a
ProLoader and another called a URLRequest.
1 Insert a new layer at the top and rename it actionscript.
2 Press F9 (Windows) or Option+F9 (Mac) to open the Actions panel.
P Note: The ProLoader
object is an ActionScript
object introduced
in Flash Professional
CS5.5. Older versions of
Flash relied on a similar
object called the Loader
object. The ProLoader
and the Loader objects
are identical except
that the ProLoader
handles the loading of
TLF text better for more
reliable and consistent
performance.
P Note: To compare
punctuation, spacing,
spelling, or any
other aspects of the
ActionScript, view the
Actions panel in the
09End.fla file.
3 Type the following two lines exactly as they appear here:
import fl.display.ProLoader;
var myProLoader:ProLoader=new ProLoader();
This code first imports the necessary code for the ProLoader class, and then
creates a ProLoader object and names it myProLoader.
4 On the next line, type the following lines exactly as they appear here:
page1_mc.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, page1content);
function page1content(e:MouseEvent):void {
var myURL:URLRequest=new URLRequest("page1.swf");
myProLoader.load(myURL);
addChild(myProLoader);
}
346
Lesson 9
Loading and Controlling Flash Content