Several Flash MX Questions.

[Djbell]

Hi All hope you can help, here are my questions.

1. Is it possible for me to populate my flash MX with menu buttons that are automatically created by whatever is in a text file, for example, if my text file had the following:-

Home
Links
Contact
Guestbook

Could I get something to create the buttons automatically, also if the buttons were to become to many on the page could they be put into a scrolling box Automatically.

2. I would like to create an automatic Bio page for the members of my website which can change constantly. What I would like to do is use a database which stores the members photo and Bio then I want flash to automatically update the Bio page according to the entries in the database, So for example if I had the following members.
Callum
Steve
Jackie

Then on the Bio Page I would have a Box that brought in the picture and a Dynamic text field (Scrollable) that would bring in the Bio depending on which name was clicked on.

So if i added another memeber to the database then it would automatically update the memebrs links so that once the name was selected that person photo and Bio would be loaded from the database.

3. I would also like to have the following on my page.

A contact Form (This would be emailed to the webmaster)
A registration Form (Preferably created from either a database or text file)
A GuestBook (Database Again)
A NewsPoster (This would have to be a database I think. I would like this so memebers can post news that automatically fills a news page on my webpage, all news after 7 days old would be archived and the archive links would be made available on my news page.)

Sorry Guys, I know I am asking a huge amount, but I have been landed the job of creating our Automatic Dynamic webpage, that has to be ready in a few weeks time, and I have no Flash experience whatsoever, to be truthfull I got this job because I made a simple html intranet that was linked to a database. Also since I am a newbie if possible step by step guides would be good, I am a very quick learner when it comes to this sort of stuff.

Regards

Djbell

 

[wangbar]

1 Yes - you need to have a button/movieclip with a dynamic text field in it, you can then load the info from the database/textfile into your flash movie and name the buttons by setting the dynamic textfields to the values you're bringing in.

The scrolling of several buttons isn't a massive task and can be achieved with a little actionscript or scrollpane component.

2 Yes again - MX will load jpg images dynamically, store a reference to the photo in the DB so Flash can find it on the server. Text can be loaded into textbox as above.

3 Forms and guestooks are easy - you use Flash to build a decent interface then send out the information gathered to a server-side script which does the hard work


If you're just beginning to put stuff together the first things you need to get familiar with in Flash in order to put this application together are:

the loadVars object
the loadMovie() method
the textfield object

and I'd recommend Actionscript: the Definitive Guide by Colin Moock as the best reference to learn from.