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Flash Article

 

Skinning the ActionScript 3.0 FLVPlayback component


Dan Carr

Dan Carr

Dan Carr Design

Table of Contents

Created:
16 April 2007
User Level:
Intermediate
Products:
Flash

One of the big feature upgrades in Flash CS3 Professional is the upgrade of the video and user interface components to ActionScript 3.0. The FLVPlayback and FLVPlayback custom UI components can be skinned in a similar way to the Flash 8 version, but they now share some of the standardized approaches and improvements available to all ActionScript 3.0 components—as well as a few new skinnable controls.

This article covers three approaches available for skinning the ActionScript 3.0 FLVPlayback component:

  • Choosing prebuilt skins through the Select Skin dialog box
  • Using the FLVPlayback custom UI components to mix and match customizable controls
  • Creating your own prebuilt skins

In addition, the article closes with a brief look at skinning the ActionScript 3.0 user interface components. This process is now standard and is similar to working with the video components.

Note: This article covers skinning the FLVPlayback component available in the Components panel of a Flash CS3 Professional ActionScript 3.0 file. If you're using Flash Professional 8 or working with an ActionScript 2.0 file in Flash CS3, please see the previous version of this article for the appropriate details, Customizing the FLVPlayback component.

Requirements

To make the most of this tutorial, you'll need the following software and files:

Flash CS3 Professional

The ActionScript 3.0 FLVPlayback component comes with Flash CS3 Professional along with the new Flash CS3 Video Encoder.

Sample file:

Although it's not mandatory in order for you to understand this article, it will be helpful to have a Flash video (FLV) file on hand, so you can test your skin customizations with a working file. If you don't already have an FLV file to use, you can download this sample file.

Prerequisite knowledge

This article focuses on customizing the FLVPlayback component using the skinning features and assumes you are familiar with working with Flash video and have some previous experience using ActionScript. For details on how to play and control videos, see Flash video template: Video presentation with navigation.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

About the author

Dan Carr is owner, lead developer, and trainer for Dan Carr Design in San Francisco. With years of history developing for Macromedia and Adobe, Dan has created a range of features available in Flash, including e-learning templates, UI components, and Developer Resource Kit extensions. Dan teaches Flash design and ActionScript classes in San Francisco and develops e-learning and web applications for the public, as well as for Adobe product teams.