The following is a cut down version of a quick personal future reference article, which can be found here.

So whats a Shared Object

Flash “Shared Objects” provide facility to store and retrieve information on a clients machine similar in method to conventional to cookies. Example use’s for Shared Object data could include a user’s name, progress and high score.

Creating a Shared Object

Before we can use a shared object, we have to create a reference to it within our Flash movie. To do so, just put this line of code in the first frame of your movie:

save_data = SharedObject.getLocal("user_data");

Writing Data to the Object

Writing data to the object s an easy task.  Take a look at the following example to save a users game progress:

save_data.data.game_level = 2;
save_data.data.game_score = 50;
save_data.data.game_health = 50;

Note that this code must be in the same level where you have created the Shared Object.Each of the lines can be broken down as follows:

“Shared Object” .data. “Reference Name” = value

Reading Data from the Object

To retrieve data from a saved Shared Object is similar to the writing method, just reverse the calls as follows:

var game_level = save_data.data.game_level;
var game_score = save_data.data.game_score;
var game_health = save_data.data.game_health;

So thats it for now. If your taste bud’s have been stimulated and you want more information in greater detail, please take at the full article.

If you search the web, or in the Flash IDE help in reference to setting focus, you might find notes on the FocusManager, IFocusManager, and possibly some details on having to include components for these classes to be triggered. These are all significant in some situations, but for setting focus in everyday AS3, it’s much, much easier.

All you really need to do is use stage.focus property.

As it is a read/write property, by result you are provided with ultimate control. The following details some AS3 code which allows you force focus onto any InteractiveObject – Sprites, MovieClips, TextFields etc:

stage.focus = your_object

So say we have a list of clips stored as an Array like so:

var movieA:MovieClip = new MovieClip();
var movieB:MovieClip = new MovieClip();

addChild(movieA);
addChild(movieB);

var clips:Array = new Array(movieA, movieB);

We could set the focus to movieB by calling the following:

stage.focus = clips[1];

Simple eh. I use a similar system for controlling button tabbing within some of my applications. The above code is fairly psudo so I hope you get the idea.

To Jump straight to the demos click on the images, controls e, s, d and f keys + mouse and click.

For full details check out the following: animasinteractive.com , actionscriptarchitect.com

I must remember to keep an eye on this one.

There is something I like about the words wii and flash being used in conjunction with each other but thats another story lol.

actionscriptarchitect.com
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