I wonder could some one enlighten me on an easier way of solving this code.I am new to flash and actionscript.
I want to have a text box, where a user enters their name. Each time a charachter is pressed, and image of that letter is displayed below the text box. So for example. user rights john. John is displayed in nice images below.
I have got this working, but I have to create a input box for each character, so I am left with eg. 6 boxes for each letter of name, that will only accept a character each. The reason for this is, I cannot place the images after each other, they keep overwriting the position of the 1st character typed, if only one single textbox is used.
I know i am going the long way around this, there must be something alot easier.
Here is the code, it will be very tedious if I have to go this route. Could someon give me a quick hinter on the correct way to go about this.
Thanks Fintan
////////////////111111////////////////////
firstname.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, key_pressed);
function key_pressed(event:KeyboardEvent):void {
if (event.charCode == 65) {
var fl_MyInstance_2:LibrarySymbol = new LibrarySymbol();
fl_MyInstance_2.x = 50
fl_MyInstance_2.y = 200
addChild(fl_MyInstance_2);
} else if (event.charCode == 66) {
var fl_MyInstance_3:letterb = new letterb();
fl_MyInstance_3.x = 50
fl_MyInstance_3.y = 200
addChild(fl_MyInstance_3);
} else if (event.charCode == 67) {
var fl_MyInstance_4:letterc = new letterc();
fl_MyInstance_4.x = 50
fl_MyInstance_4.y = 200
addChild(fl_MyInstance_4);
} else if (event.charCode == 68) {
var fl_MyInstance_5:letterd = new letterd();
fl_MyInstance_5.x = 50
fl_MyInstance_5.y = 200
addChild(fl_MyInstance_5);
} else if (event.charCode == 69) {
var fl_MyInstance_6:letterd = new letterd();
fl_MyInstance_6.x = 50
fl_MyInstance_6.y = 200
addChild(fl_MyInstance_6);
}
I'll give you some code and some hints to try to point you to the right direction.
First of all, you don't need one different class for each alphabet letter - that would be at least 26 classes, or 52 if you take into account upper case/lower case, and it's totally unnecessary because each and all only serve one purpose - to show one letter.
What I would do instead is to make one MovieClip with 26 different frames (or 52 if upper/lower cases) labelled "a" to "z" (or "A" to "z"). In each of those frames, put the drawing of one letter, and one stop();. Link only this MovieClip to a class - Letter, or whatever.
Then, when the user writes on your firstname TextField, you have to be careful because he/she can hit other keys that are not letters - for example, the del key, back arrow, etc that might mess up with your visual representation. I think the only way to make sure you display everything right is to draw each time the whole contents of the textfield, like this:
//KEY UP EVENT
firstname.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP, key_pressed);
//container (empty) movieclip
var container_mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip();
addChild(container_mc);
function key_pressed(e:KeyboardEvent):void
{
var offset:Number=0;
//clear container to update visual representation
while(container_mc.numChildren>0)
container_mc.removeChildAt(0);
var letterInstance:Letter; //your linked class
for(var i:uint=0;i<firstname.text.length;i++)
{
letterInstance = new Letter();
//go to frame corresponding to the letter at position "i"
//OR use your own system to choose the image for each letter!
letterInstance.gotoAndStop(first_name.text.charAt(i));
//postion: x (plus offset to avoid overwritting), y
letterInstance.x = 50 + offset;
offset+= letterInstance.width;
letterInstance.y = 200;
//add letter to container
container_mc.addChild(letterInstance);
}
}
This code still has some problems, like names with non-letter characters like whitespaces, apostrophes, etc, but I think you can start working from here ;)
Hope to be of some help, good luck!