Placing Symbols in FlashDevelop from Flash Pro

Question

I'm working on a web application in Flash and using Flash Pro for designing the more graphic parts of my application and FlashDevelop for the code.

So far, I have created a UI in Flash Pro. I wanted to import this UI into FlashDevelop, so I saved the parts of the UI as a symbol, exported as SWC, etc. However, when I loaded the symbols in FlashDevelop, all of them were placed by default in the upper left corner of the screen. While I would be able to write code to move each symbol to the correct location in FlashDevelop on startup of the program, such a technique sounds inefficient.

How should I import my symbols so that they are placed in the same positions as I placed them in on the stage in Flash Pro?

Answer 1

You can try putting all your U.I symbols into one "container" movieclip before you export the SWC. Basically "grouping" them inside another movieClip. To do this just select all items in your U.I at once and then convert to movieclip. Give name to access it via FlashDevelop code. That's it. No need to move, change or delete anything. Just select & convert.

Now in Flash Develop you can move add & position that one "container" MC to position the whole interface. Your original U.I elements inside will now have to be accessed in the code as children of "container"..

To edit your existing code to account for the new container MC name? That's where the text tool "Find & Replace" comes in handy.. replacing for example "playBTN." with "containerMC.playBTN." (notice the fullstops?) hit ok and taa-daa in one click you edited X amount of code lines without tedious re-typing. Hope it helps.