Anybody that happens to know how to do this would really be helping me out.
Maybe its simple, I don't know, but it involves embedded SWF's so I imagine it could entail interacting with event handlers or methods in an embedded SWF.
But anyway, here it is:
I have several embedded SWF's on a canvas (in SWFLoaders) and when one of them changes visually I need to know which one changed.
The 'render' event provides only part of the solution:
If an SWFLoader contains a videodisplay there are continual render events generated in the parent app while that videodisplay is running. If the SWFLoader just contains some static input control otoh, there are no render messages in the parent app until someone interacts with that control and changes it visually, and then there are render events broadcast in the parent app. So, this is clearly part of what my requirements are.
The problem with the render event however, is that it does not tell you which embedded SWF actually changed (in the target or currentTarget.)
But I need to know which one changed.
(Are there seperate render messages being generated within an embedded app (seperate from those in the parent app) for example, that could be detected.)
My solution is as follows:
When a render event occurs, I check if there is a visible swfloader within the browser window, and then I do a BitmapData.draw of its contents to a bitmapdata which is saved. With each new render event, I compare 10% of the pixels of the saved bitmap to the new bitmap and that will tell me whether or not the embedded .swf visual content has actually changed. a 10% sample has proven to be more than sufficient (just iterating through the vectors of the respective bitmaps with the vector index incrementing by 10, instead of 1.)
BitmapData.draw is plenty fast and iterating through 10000 vector elements is like a millisecond.
Related
What is the best way to do a loader in a flex application? I have an animated .gif that is to be used as our loader (whenever I need to wait for an action to complete), and I am not sure the best way to do it.
This is how I am thinking:
Have the loader be a custom component.
On the parent application, add an event listener for my custom event AceEvent.SHOW_LOADER.
In the event listener, use the PopUpManager to show the loader.
Listen for AceEvent.HIDE_LOADER.
Get rid fo the loader via PopUpManager.
What do you think about this? Is there a better way to do it?
Thanks!
Andrew
Well, last I checked, animated gifs don't work in Flex unless you have a workaround. Still, I wouldn't use an animated gif to create an animation because of their low quality. I would just recreate it using Flash.
The way I would do the loader however would be very different. personally, I don't believe in 'system loaders' unless it's your application's preloader. The reason for this is that there could be more than one thing loading at the same time (which might not know about each other) which means that the loader popup could disappear before everything is loaded (first one loads, dispatches event and removes popup, while the other is still loading).
What I like to do is create a custom component for the popup loader (since it will be reused quite a bit) and from there I can either use states the are appropriate for my view or have a boolean flag binded to show the popup when true (this can easily be done using frameworks like Parsley). The popup would only cover the part of the system that's actually loading data (since I doubt that your whole app is loading data at the same time) which makes for a better UX.
I ended up using as3gif (until I can get this recreated as a .swf). The way I do this is by using my custom event class (AceEvent.SHOW_LOADER and AceEvent.HIDE_LOADER), which bubbles up to the top. I then use the PopUpManager to add/remove this with modal to disable the application.
When I try to access the hidden TABs of my tab navigator control in action script, it returns a null error. But it works OK if I just activate the control in the user interface once. Obviously the control is not created until I use it. How do I make all the tabs automatically created by default ?
<mx:TabNavigator creationPolicy="all"/>
That should do it. Deferred instanciation is a feature, but sometimes it is a hassle.
The Flex framework is optimizing creation be default (creationPolicy="auto") so if you have a configuration dialog with a lot of tabs, for example, and the most useful tab is the first one, your application does not spend time and memory initializing the tabs that the user never sees.
This makes a lot of difference when dialogs like this never release, and is a good default to go with.
One thing to look at is using a private variable in your dialog/form instead of pushing the data to the control on the hidden page. This style treats the whole form as if it were a component, which it sort of is. To repeat: the MXML form/dialog/canvas is a class, and it can have data and methods in addition to containing other components.
Cheers
On a side note, I've run into the deferred-loading policy in a multi-state application, and circumvented it by forcing all elements to be included and invisible in the initial state. Something to consider, but only as a hack.
What is the best way to render to a UIComponent which hasn't been added to the stage? (I'm using UIComponents as renderers for objects, and want to render new copies for image export, filtering, etc.)
Two strategies I've seen/used so far include realizing the component to ensure it calls all the lifecycle methods:
Add the component to Application.application, render with BitmapData.draw(), remove component. This is similar to what I've seen done for printing unrealized components as well.
Add the component to a pop up window, render with BitmapData.draw(), dismiss popup after rendering complete.
I believe both of these just rely on the UI not refreshing while the current thread/event is executing, though (1) could also rely on the component being realized out of view.
Is there a better way?
What I've used in the past with much success is the following:
Create a new instance of your component
Add an event listener for FlexEvent.CREATION_COMPLETE
Set visible=false on the component
Add the component as a child of the main Application
When the component is created, the event listener function will be invoked. The rest of the logic should be put in / invoked from your event listener function
Remove the event listener you added in step #2.
Use ImageSnapshot.captureImage() or captureBitmapData() to capture the visual representation of the component.
Remove the component from the main Application
Process the image data as you need to.
I've used this to snapshot various Flex charting components for use in PDF's generated on the server side. After getting the BitmapData I use the PNGEncoder or JPEGEncoder classes to compress the data, then encode it in Base64 before uploading to the server.
I'm pretty sure you can use the draw() method in BitmapData without having your component on the DisplayList.
For example is use it when I need to modify images I load with the Loader Class. In the init handler I create a BitmapData instance and draw the Bitmap from the loadInfo.content property, then copyPixels() or whatever I need to modify the loaded image
So much of a UIComponent's layout can be tied to it's context. This is especially true for a lot of its derivatives (e.g. HBox) since the fluidity of the layout is tied to it's parent's size and the number of siblings sharing its parents space.
Additionally Flex can be a real pain to get to visually update. Often critical render functions aren't done synchronously ... there are callLater, callLater2 and other hacky approaches that make dealing with the auto-magical layout properties of UIComponents a major headache. Not even calling validateNow or updateDisplayList can guarantee that the layout will be correct on the current frame (instead of a few frames in the future).
I suggest the best thing you can do is not use a UIComponent and try and use a Sprite or other.
Your approach to attach it but make it invisible (alpha = 0, mouseEnabled = false, mouseChildren = false) is decent. You should listen for the FlexEvent.CREATION_COMPLETE callback before you are certain it is properly laid out. Then you can bitmapData.draw it and then remove it from the stage. If you must use UIComponents then I know of no better way.
You can call the lifecycle function manually before using the BitmapData.draw(). Do the following.
createChildren().
commitProperties().
updateDisplayList().
bmd.draw().
The first 2 steps are not 100% necessary, you can put all codes into updateDisplayList(). Because you invoke the function manually, you don't have to worry this is invoked by Flex framework many times.
An MXML component can be quite complex, containing many nested controls, including asynchronously loaded content such as Image/SWFLoader.
Is there one event I can watch for on my component that will only be raised when every control and sub-component has loaded, including SWFs and Images?
CreationComplete will NOT do the trick if you are talking about loading swf content or anything really external like that. CreationComplete gets fired when the MXML components have been laid out as defined in MXML (IE nested components, buttons, boxes, canvasses, etc.), so content that needs to get loaded externally (an image, a swf) does not count.
What you need to do is keep track of everything that you're waiting for and fire off a custom event once all of those elements have loaded.
One possible hackish way to do it would be to listen for whatever load complete event is relevant for each element, then have them call back to the same function that increments a value equal to the number of components you're waiting for. This means you have to pay more attention if you're modifying it, but it also means you don't have to check a boolean for every element that needs to load (IE "if (image1Loaded && image2Loaded && swfLoaded)" etc.)
The onApplicationComplete event?
The creationComplete event should do the trick - creationComplete is called on the parent component after it is called on the children.
You can get some more info on the component lifecycle in the Adobe docs.
In some complex cases, like when your component is considered "finished" only when some data has been retrieved via HTTP or something like that, custom event is your best bet.
I came across this topic today while investigating something very strange. Doing certain things in our Flex app can cause the number of frames rendered to rocket, from 12fps to ~30fps: loaded animations start playing at high speed and the GUI starts to lock up.
Since everything I've read on Flex/Flash hammers home the point "the frame rate is capped at the fps set in the top level app", it seems the only way these extra renders can be happening is due to some events causing them (no programmatic changes to the stage's framerate are done anywhere). Since it only happens when I put my update logic in the ENTER_FRAME handler, I'm trying to figure out what might be happening which to apparently causing Flex to go render-crazy.
Hypothesis: something in my update function is triggering an immediate screen update, this raises another ENTER_FRAME immediately, which means my update loop gets called, which triggers another immediate screen update, ...
We have Flex components used in our GUI, if this is a factor. I don't really know where to go next on this.
Clarifications:
When I say things speed up, there
are two ways this manifests.
Firstly, my ENTER_FRAME handler gets
called far more often.
Secondly, a
loaded Flash SWF with a looping
animation built in suddenly speeds
up to te point it looks silly.
I am not using updateAfterEvent, I only
found this existed when researching
this problem. Apparently, some
events on Sprite subclasses
automatically call this and I wonder
if that's the root cause.
I am not doing any direct messsing about with rendering at all. Background animations play automatically as they have timelines built-in from CS3 authoring, all our update function does is change the position of DisPlayObjects or add/remove them etc
Update:
I added a label to my app to print out stage.frameRate, and discovered at certain times, it suddenly changes from 12 to 1000 (the maximum allowed value). While it was trivial to add a line to my ENTER_FRAME handler to reset it that's hardly a big help.
Also, even doing this, the rendering is all messed up. Certain actions (like raising an Alert popup) make it all spring back into life.
Unfortunately, I am not able to view the source of the Stage class to set a breakpoint on the setter property.
That's very interesting about the Flex loading 'set to 1000fps' thing. What we have are several Flex applications which all provide a common interface. A master app is in charge of loading these modules as required through the SWFLoader class. However, the loading process already takes into account the delayed loading... when the SWF loads we then wait for the APPLICATION_COMPLETE from the SystemManager. Once this is received, shouldn't the applications completion have occurred?
Flex sets the frame rate to 1000 during "phased instantiation" of Flex components, which occurs only during initial load of a flex swf. This allows it to build all components very quickly.
Are you waiting for the Flex app to be fully loaded and constructed? You should be waiting for FlexEvent.CREATION_COMPLETE before working with your Flex content.
If you would like a reference to where this occcurs, look in the Flex LayoutManager class, line 326 (using Flex SDK 3.0.194161), in the setter for the property usePhasedInstantiation.
Update:
APPLICATION_COMPLETE should have you covered for the initial load.
This actually happens any time components are created directly from MXML. So there are a few other cases to look for. Are you using any Repeaters? Do you use any navigation containers that are building their children on demand?
One thing I'm not clear on - are you seeing that the actual screen refreshes are occurring faster than the published framerate? Or is it that your animations are moving faster but the screen refreshes are unchanged? (i.e., it used to move 10 pixels per second, but now it moves faster than that, regardless of how often the screen is drawn.)
An easy way to check this would be to try publishing your content at 1 fps. It should be clear whether the screen is redrawing once per second, but animated elements are being moved more frequently than that, or whether the screen is actually updating more frequently.
If the latter, are you using any updateAfterEvent() methods in your code? This can cause actual screen refreshes to occur faster than the published framerate. It shouldn't affect ENTER_FRAME events though. You should still only get one of those per frame update.
Alternately, are the things you're animating just Sprites and so on, or are you implementing them as Flex components, and trying to redraw them with invalidate() methods and RENDER events and so on?
If you could clarify a few of these points in the question the answer might be clearer. Thanks...
Thanks for the clarifications. If a loaded clip with a animation (I assume you mean a frame animation) is speeding up, then that certainly sounds like something is changing your playback framerate, as opposed to other things that could be going on. With that said it's not a problem I've seen crop up before, but I do think there are some things you could try that ought to narrow down where the problem is:
You might as well try tracing out stage.frameRate during the speed-up. Presumably nothing ought to be changing your framerate, but since that would explain your issues you might as well rule it out.
Try removing as many GUI components as possible and seeing if the problem still occurs, if it's possible to trigger the problem without them.
One sanity check you could try, if it's feasible, is to copy some of the contents of your game into a fresh project and try it there. Sometimes mysterious issues like this happen because some class or SWC is being imported somewhere that everyone forgot about.
You could try driving your code from a different event. For example, as far as I know driving it from Event.EXIT_FRAME or Event.FRAME_CONSTRUCTED ought to look the same, but if it doesn't then that's a hint. Alternately, you could try driving it from something like a keyboard event or MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE. Then if updates occur even though you're not firing events, you'll know something else is driving things besides your event loop.
Those are the things I'd try, anyway. Hope you track it down...