Flash Experiments

Have a look and download the ZIP/RAR files you want (containing the FLA, AS and miscellaneous files used to create the corresponding Flash movieclip).

Important notes:

• .ZIP files are compressed ZIP archives which can be expanded with WinZip or equivalent tools.
• .RAR files are compressed RAR archives which can be extracted with WinRAR or equivalent tools.
• .7Z files are compressed 7ZIP archives which can be extracted with 7-zip, WinRAR or equivalent tools.
• see for more info on these and other file types/extension: tools that might come handy.

• Tools that might come handy (ZIP, RAR, UltraEdit, Flash player, etc.)

• FlashExperiments source license: GPL

• [Off Topic] Apache 1.3.2x stuff for Win2K/Windows NT4

The List

• Personal AS scripts
• Circular Preloader ("Progress Bar")
• Panorama View with speed zoom
• duplicateMovie() Array example #1
• duplicateMovie() Array example #2
• Moock: circular motion - now with support for circle segment and back & forth movement
• Forward Button Events to Registered MovieClips: Observer Pattern
• MD5 Trouble on the Mac (Now with Flash 9 / AS 3.0 update!)
• Basic Find-The-Words-In-The-Matrix Puzzle setup
• Sinus & Cosinus educational Flash demo
• Animated Pie Chart MC & demo
• Bermuda Triangle 'Pyramid Menu' test version
• Smooth scrolling navigator (button) bar
• Presentation Template in Flash
• Mersenne Twister ported to ActionScript (Generate reproducable flat-distribution semi-random number sequences)
• Encryption/decryption code in Flash
• My patched derivatives of Branden Hall's work and others: XML:ACK, XML:FLEM, ACK, pQueue, SWFqueue, String, HSV color, Array.sort
• [Off Topic] Syntax highlighting AS ActionScript files for UltraEdit32
• Copyright and Contact Info

Update News

• 28/Nov/2008
  • The MD5 Flash code has been upgraded to a class & package, suitable for use with Adobe Flash 9 / ActionScript 3.0. It is available as a separate download (the old Flash 5 archive is still on-line as well for those who want/need that). Thanks to Jessy Exum, Bastiaan van Lunteren and Thomas Quiring for valuable feedback.
• Sep/2006
  • Circular Preloader / Progress Bar has been updated; now includes fixed color tween code and an example FLA Flash 8 project which demonstrates one of the possible uses of the progress bar as a 'movieclip preloader'.
• 19/Aug/2005
  • Sorry for the inconvenience! I've been off-line for 1.5 week by now, probably due to weather conditions affecting my uplink and equipment. This problem still has not been resolved completely, but I hope this can be wrapped up next week as it seems both sides (KPN an me) have experienced malfunctions due to heavy weather.
  • Germany is in the past. Being busy with work isn't new either, so Flash is still simmering on a very low burner ATM.
• 14/Dec/2002
  • :-( The server suddenly started yelling: AMD Athlon (Slot A; a real antique) almost fried. Luck had it that the Gigabyte mainboard now has a fried 12 Volt supply for the CPU fans (so they stopped working), yet the CPU survived, contrasting the video at Tom's Hardware a year ago (where the AMD chips died when the cooling failed). For now I've patched the CPU fans directly to the 12Volt supply and the CPU is coooool again (35 degrees Celcius). Let's hope the board didn't get a taste for failing by having its fan power line burn out...
  • Not much to report Flash-wise. Have been working abroad (Germany) now for half a year (C++ coding) and will probably do some more Flash (MX) work in Q1 2003. Stay tuned. ;-)
• 20/Apr/2002
  • Added 'Encryption/decryption code in Flash' when triggered by a question in Flahcoders. Hope this is useful to some folks.
• 10/Apr/2002
  • Added a small archive (FLA, AS) with Mersenne Twister and regular LCG PRNG code ported to AS. these PRNGs can be used to produce random numbers for games, simulations, etc.: anywhere where you need a good random number generator that can be controlled.
• 26/mar/2002
  • added a small-download-size variant for the Flash presentation template: no more rendered robot movie <snif>, but a few shape tweens that look like cr*p to replace it. Big plus is that it's now only 190KByte instead of 6+MByte ;-)
  • added links to the 'hidden' ZIP files containing my patched versions of XML:ACK, XML:FLEM and verious other works by Branden Hall.
• 5/mar/2002
  • VERY preliminairy presentation template in Flash added 
• 14/feb/2002
  • :-( upgraded Alcatel ADSL modem firmware from 2.61 to 2.70; Draytek router software 2.00a downgrade to 1.08 however disabled my webserver, so now it's Draytek firmware 2.00a again plus the Alcatel 2.70 firmware. Let's just pray uptime is improving... No changes (busy busy busy) to the contents of these pages.
• 6/feb/2002
  • Did a bit of reorganizing of this page: split off the Apache stuff to a separate page; added references to all those archiving tools, editors, etc. I regularly use. Hm, apparently I'm suffering from the 'spring time cleanup' disease, normally reserved for the opposite gender. Cleaning up the house, the website, jeez, what's oing to be next?!
• 3/feb/2002
  • Uh-oh. :-( somehow navbar1.rar never made it to its designated location. Fixed. So now - finally - anyone can download the sources for the 'Smooth scrolling navigator (button) bar'. Sorry, folks.
• 1/feb/2002
  • added the 'Smooth scrolling navigator (button) bar' after a question about such type of navigation/animation was asked in the FlashCoders mailing list. Moves around real smooth. ;-)
• 27/jan/2002
  • Grmbl. Down a whole day thanks to trouble with my ADSL line. :-( Besides that, having this site running on a test machine doesn't get me any closer to 99.9% too. Sorry folks. Meanwhile I'm trying to reproduce the 'error 126' for Apache on Win32 systems. No 'luck' so far.
• 18/Jan/2002
  • Made various 'twaeked/extended' versions available for AS work originally by Branden Hall: ACK, FLEM, XML:ACK, XML:FLEM, etc. plus some work of my own. This is a sort of small AS library which tags along from project to project. Some simple, some complex stuff, but handy to have them clickable when I'm not serverside.
  • Failure to load Apache module mod_bandwidth.so for Win32: error 126. (reported by Steve Potts) I couldn't reproduce the error but found some info that might help. Hope it helps anyone out there who's also suffering from error 126. Copied info locally and adapted it for mod_bandwidth et al. 
• 17/Jan/2002
  • Ah, another version of the Pyramid Menu, version 0.0.7. Now includes the first part of the imagined 'selection sequence'; still needs to be XML driven, but that will have to wait till later. Did a couple of tests with other techniques advised by other folks at FlashCoders. Didn't give the mighty improvements I'd hoped. Completely pre-rendering the scene using 3D MAX delivered a 2+ MB file (Illustrate screwed up; I got a chance to use Swift, but that version had a icky artifact too: some line would extend slightly beyond the corners of the pyramid. Though it might've been me being in a hurry to get some results... Anyway, timing indicates graphics rendering takes the longest time, so I'd better find some solution for that unless I want to keep the low frame rates. :-( ) 
• 15/Jan/2002
  • Yeah, it's been awful quiet on this page the last 4 weeks. Enough hits but no new items added. Sorry about that. Will publish a presentation template (very alpha version really) in a week or so. Now at least partly XML driven, FLEMmified (not completely, I confess) and with the latest version of the Pyramid Menu included. I hope. The site has been down two days while I was away the last days of past December, but that has been resolved. (Never trust a machine to work while you sit back and relax.) Oh, and before I forget: thanks for filling my logfiles with your portscans and Nimda et al hack attempts. To quote Monty Python: I fart in your face, you portscanners.
• 18/Dec/2001
  • A second version of the 'Pyramid Menu' test version is available for any of you who like to play around with it. Go here.
• 17/Dec/2001
  • It's been a long silence here. I have a few more grey hairs now, thanks to Flash ;-( Anyway, the latest addition to the collection is the Bermuda Triangle 'Pyramid Menu', still under development. A pyramid, constructed from smaller pyramids, which can be rotated by moving the mouse. Item selection is not yet implemented (sorry), but the pyramid is true 3D perspective view (no easy isometric tricks here). Yes, to make sure this real-time rendered multi-pyramid performs at least a bit, the basic pyramid element rotation has been pre-rendered. The 'radar screen' overlay slows this thing down quite considerably, and it was a speed hog to begin with anyway :-( ANY suggestions to improve the speed of this mother are much appreciated!
• 5/Nov/2001
  • Ok, so this site gets a little more attention than one hit per month. ;-) Given that situation and the fact that I got a few questions about using this material, it was about time I sat back and decided on the licensing, copyright and related issues. For now, I decided to put everything under a GPL license, which can be easily lifted by just asking me to.
    You don't agree or just want to discuss licensing/copyright policy with me? I'm all for that, so let's discuss this!
• 4/Nov/2001
  • Added 'Animated Pie Chart' SWF including a few pictures showing the underlying structure of the Pie Chart as I built it in Flash.
• 26/Oct/2001
  • Added Puzzle Core for Find-The-Hidden-Words type of puzzle. Just the core with the important code to show this mechanism is easily built in AS/Flash.
  • Added a very nice (that's what I think anyway ;-) ) educational demo of the sinus and cosinus goniometric functions: fully animated!
  • Grabbed my old CSS stylesheet I used for my old Web Site (off-line for a loooong time now), blew away the dust and converted this FlashExperiments site. Just the basics, m'am!
• 20/Oct/2001
  • Added Off-Topic material: binaries and source for Apache 1.3.22 Win32 including a ported mod_bandwidth module for bandwidth limiting of HTTP connections. Handy for roughly simulating 'slow modem connections' with your SWF Flash movies.
• 14/Oct/2001
  • Added Off-Topic material: WORDFILE.TXT extension for UltraEdit32 so anyone can have syntax highlighting with their .AS ActionScript files. :-)
• 10/Oct/2001
  • Oh boy. Still more trouble with the Mac Flash player and MD5. Many thanks to Carlos Saenz for helping debugging and testing the MD5 code on the Mac. See below for an ActionScript MD5 implementation which has been proven to work on a Mac. Let's hope there's no more Mac out there throwing up on MD5 anymore.
• 8/Oct/2001
  • Another mistake :-( The correct name of the pattern is 'Observer Pattern' (see 'Design Patterns' by Gamma et al) instead of Visitor Pattern.
  • Added MD5 test FLA while searching for cause of incompatibility between Mac and Intel Flash: Mac's produce incorrect MD5 results given this MD5 AS implementation.
  • Cause of MD5 on MAC found by Branden Hall, fix available (replace the '&' bitwise AND operator by a function. '&' fails on MAC for integers which are negative (have bit 31 set)
• 5/Oct/2001
  • Oops!!! <blush> Copy-paste-edit failure! Fixed hyperlinks to ZIPs: if you'd click on the 'Download ZIP' text instead of on the name of the ZIP file following it, you'd always download the include-and-dupe.zip, even if you thought you'd be clicking another download link. :-((
  • Updated the 'moock circular motion' entry: FLA has now one more feature: back-and-forth movement along the circular path. Done while answering a question in the Flashcoders mailing list.

Personal ActionScript (AS) sources

Including tweaked versions of ACK, FLEM, pQueue, swfQueue, XML:ACK, etc. You might want to have a look at http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/ for the original artwork by Branden Hall.

Keywords: Branden Hall, OO, Event Engine, Queue, XML

Download: Have a  look-see.

Circular Preloader ("Progress Bar")

Changes color and shows a growing segment of the circle based on the 'percentage loaded' which you can set from another movieclip which loadMovie()'s this preloader.

Uses ActionScript to rotate and switch shapes (movieclips) to make it look like circle segment grows as the LoadPercentage variable increases from 0 to 100.

Keywords: _visible, _rotation, Color object, setTranform(), ActionScript-driven color tweening, HSV to RGB color conversion and vice versa.

Download Flash 8 FLA project (will still output Flash 5 player compatible output!): CircleLoaderV2.1.zip

View the example usage demo here.

(Old Flash 5 proejct download without the color tween bugfix and example FLA: CircleLoaderV2.zip)

Panorama View with speed zoom

This SWF shows a panorama 360 degrees around view (rather faked as I don't have 360 degrees images lying around so I faked one, the principle stays the same though) which you can rotate around using the mouse. To give a good sense of speeeeeeeeeed the image is stretched depending on the rotation speed.

Uses ActionScript to shift and zoom (stretch) a masked image object (movieclip). To make it look like the image 'wraps around the complete 360 degrees' it is duplicated so that two identical images are placed next to each other and masked.

Also shows a very crude preloader with some very basic ActionScript in the root movieclip frames. (This code is 'not aesthetic' from my coders' point of view. Yet it works.) Note that the text in the preloader is 'Broken apart' as it takes less KBytes to load as shapes than as a character sequence with implied embedded font.

Keywords: _visible, _rotation, _xscale (zoom / stretch), mask, duplicateMovieClip(), _xmouse, _ymouse

Download FLA: panorama-test.zip

duplicateMovie() Array example #1

Duplicates a movieclip many times. Used to show that duplicateMovie() does keep the ActionScript code with the clip.

Uses ActionScript to duplicate a simple shape (rectangle, movieclip) 160 times. A the movieclip which is duplicated, contains #include'd Actionscript, this code is copied to the dupe'd objects too: each object uses the same ActionScript to create this effect when you move the mouse over the 16 by 10 array.

Keywords: _visible, _alpha, Color object, setTranform(), HSV to RGB color conversion and vice versa, duplicateMovieClip(), Array, Math object

Download FLA: include-and-dupe.zip

duplicateMovie() Array example #2

As the above, but now with a nice animated 'wave' around the cursor.

Keywords: _visible, _alpha, Color object, setTranform(), HSV to RGB color conversion and vice versa, duplicateMovieClip(), Array, Math object

Download FLA: duped-wave.zip

Moock: circular motion - now with support for circle segment and back & forth movement

The FLA was downloaded from moock and edited to show circular movement over a circle *segment* at a given offset along the circle path.

Later I added code and an extra parameter to allow the ball to move back and forth. Try mode '1' at 360 degrees and be surprised. Oh, please note that the Flash movie on this site has the flaw mentioned in my email in the Flashcoders mailing list, yet the FLA has both the 'guestimated hack' shown here *and* the 'clean, proper' version which you simply cannot break. (Try mode 1 with segment '60' and an rpm of '-100' and see what I mean when you compare that with any rpm larger than, say, -50...

Keywords: % operator, degrees to radians

Download FLA: motion-circular.zip

Forward Button Events to Registered MovieClips: Visitor Pattern

(This text is copied almost straight from my email to Flashcoders, humbly asking for a review/opinion.)

So I finished my first Flash 'tour' on my way to a flexible menu system that in constructed at run-time by ActionScript.

This code is designed around the 'Visitor Pattern'[*]

What is my question?

I've got a question, right? Right. The question: anyone who feels like reviewing the ActionScript code in my FLA? I'm wondering if I 'did well' or not.

Apprentice is humbly asking AS/Flash masters for a grade. ;-)) (And please don't grade the 'look and feel'. That'll be an F- for sure. ;-( )

Elements that concern me:

• The current implementation doesn't add the onBtnXXX() methods to the MovieClip *prototype*. Since I wouldn't want each MC in the Scene to have these function methods, I guess I shouldn't add these functions to the MC .prototype. Or should I 'derive' a ButtonMC class from the Movieclip class: how to do that and *use* it?
• Is this an 'inspiring trick' or is it just this old C/C++ techno-dog who likes to construct his Scenes this way?
• I didn't check for 'prior art' within the Flash community. Is there any? (ACK comes to mind... phew... nope, though I should study ACK now...) This is a first 'deliverable' proving myself I can 'do a bit of AS'. So I sorta _had_ to do this once the idea popped into my head.
• Any advice on reducing code-size is highly appreciated.

What does it do?

You register your MC's with so-called 'invisible buttons' and receive the button events (press, release, dragover, rollover, etc.) in your movieclips(!). Just define a couple of onBtnXXX() function methods for your MC (where 'XXX' is the button event; see the FLA mentioned below) and 'RegisterMyMC(myMC)' with the desired 'invisible buttons'. This way, you can handle selected button events generated by one or multiple buttons in your own cosy MC without having to change any code in the 'invisible button' when you add other MC's that handle button events. Multiple MC's can act on the same button event of a single button by each registering with that button.

<marketroid mode>

Where would you use a beast like that?

Suppose you want to build a complex menu system (or other complex system using 'button' functionality) at run-time. The menu is built, consisting of several movieclips, each with it's own 'invisible button' on top to catch the instructions of the end-user.
Now think about this: wouldn't it be nice when 'interested parties' (i.e. other MC's in your Scene) could register themselves with *any* set of buttons they might be interested in? I know I like the idea.
This is where the Visitor Pattern comes in: you implement a few predefined function methods in your MC(s), then register it/them with all the buttons you want to get event notifications (press, release, dragover, etc.) from and off you go. Your MC knows what to do when button X is pressed (button X shouldn't know about what *you* want done!), so YOU handle the 'pressed' event of button X.
And you can now! Because you registered with button X, that button will play nice and send you each and every 'press' event it receives. (And any other events it receives too!)
And when another MC in your scene might want to 'do stuff' when button X is pressed, that MC too can register with button X. Now BOTH MC's will get those 'press' event notifications, and each 'do their stuff' *independently* of each other.

In short: buttons are not in the driver seat anymore. MC's are. And now those MC's don't only have onClipEvent() anymore! They've onBtnPress(), onBtnRelease(), etc. too!

</marketroid mode>

Any feedback is much appreciated.

[*]
'Design Patterns' (Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides, ISBN 0-201-63361-2) - OO designers/C++ coders will know what I'm talking about. Oh, it's chock-full with C++ code examples, btw.

SIDE NOTE: For those of you that like Marquis de Sade ghosting through your code: some of the lovelier C/C++ tricks work equally well in AS: check out the 'Object Actions' for the 'ExtraNotes' MC: the plain code translation is included in the comment. (A geek friend was visiting, wondering aloud why I would ever be touching Flash/AS, so I convinced him in 5 sec: "I can do this". "Oh, I suppose it's alright then". It sure is, pal...)

Keywords: function methods, onBtnPress, onBtnRelease, onBtnReleaseOutside, ...

Download FLA: ButtonVisitorPattern.zip

MD5 Trouble on the Mac (Now with Flash 9 / AS 3.0 update!)

(Nov/2008) The MD5 Flash code has been upgraded to a class & package, suitable for use with Adobe Flash 9 / ActionScript 3.0. It is available as a separate download below (the old Flash 5 archive is still on-line as well for those who want/need that).

There has been a lot of trouble with MD5 in ActionScript on the Macintosh. To be more precise: any code using 32-bit unsigned integer arithmetic will very probably probably suffer from bugs in the Mac Flash player available today (10/Oct/2001).

Many thanks to Carlos Saenz and Branden Hall of Flashcoders to help track down all Mac trouble and help test all the test versions. Thanks to Carlos I can you present a MD5 cipher ActionScript implementation which works on both Macs and PCs.

If you want to check the result for your platform/system, click on the little image below to run the SWF.

LATEST UPDATE: Branden Hall tracked down part of the problem: '&' does not work as expected on Macintosh if the integers involved have bit 31 set (i.e. are negative). Search the Flashcoders list for his solution.
I found the Mac Flash player also chokes on '|', '^' and '+' (OR, XOR and ADD) operations if bit31 is set. Apparently the criteria to make Mac Flash fail are even a bit more subtle: failures have been seen only if both input operands of said arithmetic operations have '1' bits in common, i.e. if both input operands have any bit N both set to '1', next to the requirement that at least one input operand has bit 31 set to '1', i.e. is negative.

This FLA+AS fixes all these issues: special code is included to prevent the Mac player from triggering the failing code.

NOTE: if you publish the SWF with trace enabled and remove the '//' comment marks before the trace() calls in MD5.AS, the calculation will be very slow due to the many diagnostic 'trace()' calls in the AS script.

Keywords: MD5, Macintosh bugs, '&' bitwise AND operator, '|' bitwise OR operator, '^' bitwise OR operator, '+' ADD operator

Download package source code + FLA for Flash 9 / ActionScript 3.0: md5.FL9-AS3.7z (.7z means this is a 7-zip archive)

Download FLA: md5.zip

Basic Find-The-Words-In-The-Matrix Puzzle setup

After answering a question how Branden Hall's old puzzle worked, I got asked how I'd do this in Flash5. The basic setup of the game is here: the matrix is built, words are 'hidden' in the matrix (clearly marked though for this demo) and the code to mark letters to highlight the hidden words is included here too, including all necessary matching code to match marked 'words' with the ones in the 'good' list. No highscores, no 'You Won!', no Timeout period, nothing of the simple stuff ;-) is here. Just the puzzle core redone in Flash5 based on my own ideas how I'd go about doing such a game. The marking of the words and hiding the words without 'collisions' between them are the most complex parts of the game-code anyway.

Note: the method of marking words differs from Branden's game.

Keywords: attachMovie(), Array, hitTest(), mouse events

Download FLA: puzzle.zip

Sinus & Cosinus educational Flash demo

While talking to a graphics designer about the joys of math and computer/Flash Math in particular, the question "What the Hell is this sinus and cosinus stuff anyway?!" was raised. A few leafs of paper were spent on the following sermon, after which I refrained from continuing to wear out my pencil. What's Flash for anyway, I asked? So 6 hours were spent on creating this sinus/cosinus demo in Flash. It's got the works: Unity Circle, sinus and cosinus curve built on the fly, animated rotation of the radius and real-time display of sin/cos projections, etc. Comes with configurable rotation speed and curve 'trail' as added bonus.

Enjoy! (Hope you like it as much looking at it as I enjoyed creating it.)

Keywords: Math, sin, cos, increasing angles (à la Circle PreLoader)

Download FLA: SinCosProjection.zip

Animated Pie Chart MC & demo

This was done as a basic element for a site proposal. The SWF shows a dynamic pie chart which 'tweens' according to periodically set percentages.

This Pie Chart MC accepts any number of segments (i.e. number of elements to show in the chart) and can either show a partial or a full pie chart ('partial' as in 'the total amount is less than 100%', 'full' as in a complete 100% pie).

Keywords: mask, _rotation, attachMovie(), pie chart

Download FLA: AnimatedPieChart.zip

Bermuda Triangle 'Pyramid Menu' test version

LATE BREAKING NEWS: 

• A third version of the 'Pyramid Menu' test version is available for any of you who like to play around with it. Go here. Ok, so it's not much faster, but has a bit different look and finally has at least some support for mouse-clicks and some extra animation :-) (Now includes source too for download.)

This was done as the core menu system for a site design. The SWF shows a 3D menu-to-be which can be rotated using the mouse. This version cannot yet be used as a true menu system, but is used as a proof-of-concept to show people it can be done (though rather slowly).

Keywords: 3D graphics, Bermuda Triangle, attachMovie()

Download FLA: Pyramid Menu.rar

Smooth scrolling navigator (button) bar

This was done as an attempt to answer a question in Flashcoders. The 'menu' consists of 6 buttons with a one-letter label each. When you click on a button, the 'menu' rotates so that the selected button is end up on the far left of the navigation bar. 

The 'fun part' of the code is the section which takes care of the wrap-around. And the part which reports when the selected button has arrived at the far left position.

Hint: convert the mask layer inside the menuItemBase MC into a Guide layer (or delete the layer) to see the moves of the navigation bar: each menuitem (button) is replicated to make the 'smooth scrolling effect' work, just like the 'Panorama View' above.

Keywords: duplicateMovieClip(), smooth scrolling

Download FLA: navbar1.rar

Presentation Template in Flash

A very preliminairy version of a (intended) generic XML/Flash-based presentation template. Don't bother with this if you find PowerPoint nicely suits your needs. If you want more, this might just be the idea ;-)

Anyway, have a peek and enjoy.

WARNING: the example is rather FAT and takes several MegaBytes (about 4-5) to load before the show starts. Can't help it but the 3D MAX rendered movie sections can't be crunched any more at this time.

Keywords: presentation template

Download FLA: sample_presentation.rar (6 MByte!)

Go view the presentation here.

WARNING: if you are not interested in the rendered Lego(tm) robot movie inside, but want to concentrate on the Flash 5 Actionscript code, you might want to download it's much smaller brother (only 190KByte):

Download FLA: sample_presentation.rar (190 KByte, now with a few crappy shape tweens instead of a nice movie scene)

Go view the presentation (without the robot movie inside) here.

Mersenne Twister ported to ActionScript

(Generate reproducable flat-distribution semi-random number sequences)

This is a port of the MT PRNG code to ActionScript.

Added bonus: the AS file also contains functions for regular high-speed LCG PRNG and a function to scale random values to a customer-specified range (instead of their default range). See the AS source code in the archive for more details.

Download FLA: Mersenne-Twister.rar

Encryption/decryption code in Flash

This is some basic encryption/decryption code using a secret key and a very basic (Caesarian Cipher-based) encryption method.

Note that both encrypted outputs are designed to be 'string-friendly' (i.e. do NOT contain " nor ' characters anywhere in the encrypted data stream) and XML-friendly (i.e. do NOT contain any of the < > [ ] characters either). The encrypted output will also only contain ASCII-printable characters in the standard ASCII 33 - ASCII 126 range for maximum cross-platform portability, independent of the character-range of the unencrypted input stream (for mode 1, mode 0 simply ONLY ENCRYPTS characters that are part of it's defined alphabet ('encrypt_these_chars' variable).

This one cannot compete with RC5 et al where encryption strengh is considered, but:

• it is significantly stronger than simple Caesarian ciphers (when using long secret keys)
• I'd like to hear from you if you've found anyone doing that sort of thing in Flash ActionScript. Always wished to meet the SuperGeek(tm) :-)

Note: Other (stronger) encryption methods may be added in the future, so you might want to check this space once in a while. ;-)

Also note that the AS code has not been optimized for speed. I intended to achieve maximum readability with this one.

Keywords: Encryption, Decryption

Download FLA + AS-code: EncryptionDecryption.rar

My patched derivatives of Branden Hall's work and others: XML:ACK, XML:FLEM, ACK, pQueue, SWFqueue, String, HSV color, Array.sort

• XML:ACK, XML:FLEM: merged with code from a few other people (see source code for credits); added errorcode + patch so you can detect if the XML file could not be loaded (404 or other HTTP error) in the onLoad(success_boolean) callback. The regular XML object only signals parse-failures and doesn't tell you if an XML-file simply failed to load because it wasn't there.
• ACK: added some insignificant tweaks.
• pQueue, SWFqueue: added extra member function so I can pass an arbitrary parameter to the callback (SWFqueue), added a few patches by other people (see source code for credits)
• String: added a few simple trim-whitespace member functions.
• HSV color: some code to convert between RGB and HSV color coding systems. You might want to use HSV color coding when tweening between colors, for instance.
• Array.sort: a few replacements for Array.sort() using different algorithms (quicksort, three way partition quicksort (Sedgewick), insertion sort). This code is ripped from the Pyramid Menu FLA above so expect it to be 'rough'.

Sample usage: You may see many of these in use in the Flash presentation template above: XML:FLEM, swfQueue, String, HSV color

Keywords: XML:ACK XML:FLEM ACK pQueue swfQueue String HSV RGB

Download AS code: [ACK] ACK_enventEngine_ia1.zip

Download AS code: [XML:ACK] XML_ack_ia1.zip

Download AS code: [XML:FLEM] XML_flem_ia1.zip

Download AS code: [pQueue] pQueue_ia1.zip

Download AS code: [swfQueue] SWFqueue_ia1.zip

Download AS code: [String] string_ia1.zip

Download AS code: [HSV - RGB] HSVcolor_ia1.zip

Download AS code: [Array.sort] various_sort_implementations_ia1.zip

Syntax highlighting AS ActionScript files for UltraEdit32

Download the compressed text file to add syntax highlighting for Flash (version 5) AS ActionScript files to the UltraEdit32 editor.

(Note: it's a work in progress: currently functions and events are located under the same header. Improvements are welcome here)

14/Oct/2001 13:44: Whoopsky! There is another Flash (version 4) syntax highlighting addition at: http://www.ultraedit.com/downloads/additional.html. Completely overlooked that one before. :-(

Syntax Colouring 'Colour Group'	Colour
Comments		Purple
Alternate block comments		Purple
Strings		Dark gray
Numbers		Red
Keywords		Blue
Class keywords:		Blue
Events ...		Blue
Operators		Reddish black (or just black if you like that better)
Predefined classes		Blue

Use the above colouring to (almost; numbers are different) resemble MM syntax colouring.

Keywords: UltraEdit32, Syntax Colouring

Download WORDFILE.TXT addition: wordfile.as.zip

Who's to blame?!

Std. Disclaimer: I did it. Yep. Me, the fool said. (c) Copyright Gerrit E.G. 'Insh_Allah' Hobbelt and all that. Brand names used are copyright their respective owners etc. [ad nauseam] And if you feel like using the material presented here: be my guest. The only condition is you put my name somewhere in the 'credits'. Oh, and I almost forgot: zero guarantee, zero warranty. Unless you want to pet my head for doing a good job, of course. ;-)

Contact Info: ger.hobbelt@bermuda-holding.com

Gerrit E.G. 'Insh_Allah' Hobbelt ('Ger' for friends) is a hacker (nope, not a cracker) turned Flash. He's also some sort of a local C guru (for want of a higher wizard in the neighbourhood), C++ dude and general bits-and-bytes addict. He has been messing around with almost any other available programming language and graphics software on the globe. No wonder the first thing he does when meeting Flash (version 5) is dig into Actionscript. This material is the result of a couple of weeks of long nights with MM manuals, Flash websites, Glen Deveron and various Van Wees products in absurd quantities. Let's see where this is heading, shall we...?

Ger is aged 39 and a Dutchman. As such he has been blessed with the mandatory knowledge regarding weed. Testing this theory is still on the ToDo list, alas. (I have to pick up the habit of smoking first, I guess.) His time is divided between work (designing and writing software), friends, computers and other fun. He lives in The Hague, the largest town in the Netherlands, Europe.