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Building a Google Search Application with Macromedia Flash MX Professional

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Ian Bogost

Ian Bogost

Media Revolution

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Visual Programming in Macromedia Flash
  3. Authoring Animations
  4. Attaching Script Actions

Macromedia Flash has evolved from a simple animation tool to a scriptable nonlinear authoring tool and finally a Rich Internet Application tool. With Flash MX Professional 2004, Macromedia transforms Flash into a true visual programming environment. Flash MX Pro combines the platform's familiar animation and graphical capabilities with new visual application development tools. These tools make it easy for traditional visual programmers to make the leap to Flash and enjoy its widespread installed base, cross-platform execution, and rich-media capabilities.

If you are a visual programmer working in environments like Visual Basic, Delphi, REAL basic, or PowerBuilder, you may hesitate to take advantage of the benefits of Flash because of concerns about learning a new, unfamiliar environment. To show how easily you can transfer your existing knowledge to Flash MX Professional, I explain how you can create a simple web search application that queries the Google web API using SOAP web services:

Sample Search

Requirements

To complete this tutorial, you need the following software and materials:

Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004


Flash Player


Google Web API account and license key


To examine the entire project, download the FLA source file:

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About the author

Ian Bogost is Vice President of Technology for Media Revolution, where he leads the design and development of the company's award-winning interactive marketing solutions, and manages marketing campaigns and technology initiatives for numerous Fortune 1000 companies. Before joining Media Revolution, Ian worked as a developer and artist at a host of interactive publishing and advertising agencies, including Digital Evolution/US Interactive, Rubin Postaer Interactive, and Team One/Saatchi Saatchi Advertising. He has also worked with US Sailing and various United States Congressional candidates. Ian is an established industry pioneer and frequently lectures on interactive production, narrative, and theory. His articles and reviews on web development and Rich Media Application integration have appeared in numerous industry publications.