blog . sebastian martens

swfInputs: Solving Mozilla + Transparent Mode + Win + Special Chars within inputs

As you probably know the Flash Player uses three different types of modes an Flash movie is embedded in the browser window. Its is set via the wmode parameter in the embed or param tag.

  <param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
  <embed wmode="transparent" ...

With the transparent mode you can influence the relation between the Flash movie an the surrounding HTML. If the set the wmode to window the Flash movie will always lay on top of the rest of the page. This is absolutly helpfull if your application is “standalone”, means the only center of user interaction or if you have an full window application ( at least with full screen ).
But often you have other HTML elements around the Flash movie which are at the same level of user interaction and might be as important as the Flash movie ( Best example might by fly-out menus which has to overlay all other content. Or maybe confirm messages which are not realized by the JavaScript confirm-dialog ). If you use wmode window html elements will always behind the Flash movie (setting the html z-index has no effect ), so there is no real interaction between HTML/JavaScript an the Flash movie. For this you need wmode equals transparent.

ActionScript Data Structures

In the good old Java world ( not that i’m that familiar with it ) real data structures are a well non secret. Not only in Java but in all older object oriented progaming languages exists different of Design Patterns for effecient data structures and fast access to data structures for different kind of use cases.

With data structures i don’t mean an normal or byte array which might be the data structures an the flash  world, because you use it without waisting any thought of it ( me included ). in the very most situations were you used the Flash plattform right now this might be ok, because often you don’t have the mass of data. So the performance of the Flash Player is well enough.

But the possiblities of the Flash Plattform are growing ( very fast in the last time :) ) and more and more applications ( also real applications ) are written for the web ( or for both worlds if you use AIR ).