Loading Text from External Sources

by chris9902   | filed under Flash and ActionScript

You will be creating something similar to the following animation. Be sure to click on the number buttons to see what happens:

Before we begin, you need to set the properties of the text box. Create a new animation, create a textbox, and click on the text box to display the property panel.

Once the panel has been displayed, use the following settings:

[ the important things are the "instance" and the "multiline"]

Making the Buttons
With the dynamic text field created and customized, we need to create some buttons to make use of the text field. Therefore, to the right of your text field draw three boxes.

Your workspace should look similar to the following image:

[ you can make the buttons as fancy as mine if you want ]

Once the boxes have been drawn, select each box and press F8. From the dialog box that appears, select the option for Button and press OK. Repeat the previous step for the remaining two boxes.

Now, right click on a button and select Actions. Copy and paste the following code:

on (release) { loadText = new LoadVars(); loadText.load("TEXT1.txt"); loadText.onLoad = function(success) { if (success) { // trace(success); newsBox.html = true; newsBox.htmlText = this.myNews; } }; }

[ copy and paste the above code ]

Code Explanation:

 

This is the name of the .txt file you want to load (the only part you change is the word TEXT1 to the name of your .txt file)
 

This is the variable you add to the start of your text files. I'll explain more in a few moments. If you remember, we added the actions to only one button. Copy and paste the exact set of code you pasted for your first button to the other buttons. Just remember to change TEXT1.txt to TEXT2.txt and TEXT3.txt in each of the other buttons.
Creating the .TXT Files
Open a ASCII text editor like Notepad (or Notepad if you have it ) and type some text. Now go back to the first line (before all of your text) and add "myNews=" without including the quotation works. See the following image for further clarification:

[ format the text in your Notepad/ASCII editor in a similar fashion ]

Make sure that you save the text file as TEXT1, TEXT2, and TEXT3. The file name has to correspond with the names you provided in your Actions a few moments earlier.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to post on the forums.

chris99022

Just a final word before we wrap up. What you've seen here is freshly baked content without added preservatives, artificial intelligence, ads, and algorithm-driven doodads. A huge thank you to all of you who buy kirupa's books, became a paid subscriber, watch the videos, and/or interact on the forums.

Your support keeps this site going! 😇