Chapter 25. Image Viewer/Slideshow

Loading images at runtime is a powerful feature of Flash, and it is not a particularly difficult skill to acquire. However, there remain several subtleties that practice and experience will help you to master. This chapter is devoted to the creation of an image viewer/slideshow application that highlights some of the following key skills:

• Loading JPEG content at runtime

• Monitoring the download of the content using a progress bar

• Loading XML data and using it to populate a UI component

• Extensive use of the drawing API

• Creating drag-and-drop functionality within a menu

• Using intervals to automate timed tasks

• Watching for keyboard activity

The application that you create in this chapter includes the following features:

• URLs to available images are loaded from an XML document.

• Each image has a title as well as a thumbnail, low resolution, and full image URL.

• The titles of available images are used to populate a list box.

• Users can preview the low-resolution images in a preview pane. Each preview image opens up in its own window that can be moved and resized within the preview pane.

• Users can add images to a sequence of thumbnails, the order of which can be rearranged by dragging and dropping the thumbnail images.

• The full versions of the images can be played back in the same order as the thumbnails.