Knowledge Base/3.0 Enhance your reader and publication/3.2 Enhance your pages (PAGE EDITOR)

SWF Animation Recommendations

Nathan Virtue
posted this on February 11, 2011 11:56 am

Here are some general guidelines for Flash developers to follow in order to get the best results:

  • While actionscript is allowed, DO NOT include any scripting that modifies the position or dimension of elements causing those elements to exit the main stage's area
  • We use both the stage dimensions and animation dimensions to calculate your content's proportions. For best results, create a box (can be transparent) on the first frame on the main stage with the exact same dimensions as your stage.
  • Keep all movie clips and animations inside a mask that is contained within the stage to ensure your animations stay within your stage
  • DO NOT embed FLV videos into your SWF's - upload an FLV file instead
  • Publish your SWF animations in AS3 (actionscript 3.0) ONLY - AS2 is not supported as an embeddable SWF in the new Flipbook 3.0. (it will continue to work in your existing Flipbook 2.0 issues) 

For a quick check on what versions of Flash/Actionscript your SWF is running, Try This Site

Further technical rules for developers to follow in creating AS 3.0 SWF files:

  • first frame must be exactly the size and shape of the stage
  • entire stage on frame one must be filled
  • no masking allowed on the first frame
  • no nested movie clips with animations or masking or code on first frame
  • no code on first frame

Other Notes for Developers

 application will explicitly call gotoAndPlay(1) on swf upon loading for prerender, due to nature of our application any code in frame one might be executed multiple times. you need to accommodate your code and assets accordingly.

if you need to have masking and interactivity it can exist in frame two which can have "stop()";

frame one assets might be transparent.

frame one execution might be omitted at times so there should be no vital content on frame one and content replication on frame2 might be required.