Flash Article

Data for Designers: Connecting to Data in Flash Using Data Wizards

The features of Macromedia Flash MX Professional offer a lot of flexibility to both designers and developers for creating almost anything you could imagine in any number of ways. Depending on what you're best at, Flash enables you to build files primarily with your design or programming skills. You probably use at least a bit of each in any given project but when your skill set needs to cross over to the "other side," things can sometimes get a bit tricky. What happens when you are a designer who is not used to writing code and you have a project that calls for using a bit of dynamic data? You could hire someone to do the work for you, learn the required skills yourself, or try the new Data Connection wizard to see if it can get the job done instead.

The Data Connection wizard and its buddy extension, the DataGrid Column Editor, install into Flash as MXP files that you can download from the Macromedia Exchange. Here's a sampling of what you can do with the Data Connection wizard:

• Connect to an XML- or web service–based data source
• Display the data in a DataGrid component
• Manipulate the DataGrid columns (with the DataGrid Column Editor)

As a designer, you'll find that using dynamic data is incredibly useful, even mandatory, to display certain kinds of information in a SWF file. If you want to display the current weather, stocks, or team statistics in your movie, the best way to do this is with dynamic data. It's also very useful for any kind of regularly changing content. For example, it is much easier to update something in a database than by reopening a FLA file.

But some designers may find that using dynamic data in Flash isn't exactly a walk in the park, particularly if you aren't used to writing ActionScript or binding data. With the new components in Flash MX Professional 2004, you might even find it more difficult to get started using dynamic data and making that data work with the components you use. As the Flash program develops and the files you build become more complex, combining design and development frequently occurs. That is where the Data Connection wizard can help.

This article gets you started using the new Data Connection wizard extension and Data Column Editor. Even if you have never used dynamic data with Flash, you will discover how easy these wizards make it to integrate live data with a SWF file. You won't be building a complex Rich Internet Application here because that isn't what the Data Connection wizard was designed for. But keep reading if you want to find out how to add a bit of data and interactivity to your sites, advertisements, or widgets without writing any ActionScript at all.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial you will need to install the following software and files:

Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 (version 7.0.1)

• Try
• Buy

Extension Manager 1.6

• Download

Data Connection Wizard 1.0.0

• Download

DataGrid Column Editor 1.0

• Download

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