My AS3 Window System

In the interests of building my little generative art App, I’ve decided I need some sort of window/palette system that’s robust and re-usable and looks, well, pretty cool. So I’ve made one and you can see it here.. The windows are (obviously) based on Apple’s nice little black translucent inspector windows, versions of which crop up in Aperture, Quicktime and so on. They drag from the top and bottom bars, they scale, open and close and they’re depth-managed.

There are two classes involved in all this: a WindowManager class that handles depths, focus and that very Appley drop shadow, and an Inspector class for the windows themselves. And it’s dead easy to use. Just instantiate WindowManager, add it to the stage and then tell it to create a new window with the settings you need, like so:

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import tv.palmerama.gui.*;

var winManager:WindowManager = new WindowManager();
addChild(winManager);

winManager.newWindow(10, 10, 350, 200, 0.2, "My First Inspector");

That 0.2 in the newWindow() call is the fade speed in seconds, in case you were wondering. Here’s a zip of the source with the FLA as an example and the Classes.

UPDATED: They should now have the close button on the right-hand side automatically on a PC. I’m happy to say there’s no PC here to test it on, but it should work. Updated the zip too.

August 20th, 2008 by Addy P.
It's all about the experiments / r 'n' d, flash | 11 Comments »


11 Responses to “My AS3 Window System”

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Comments:


  1. Mr-Yellow, on August 21st, 2008 at 1:48 am Said:

    Where is window contents added?

  2. ad, on August 21st, 2008 at 9:27 am Said:

    Good question – that’s next! I was thinking to make it easy maybe just having a rectangular windowArea mc in any content mc, then just pass that through in newWindowFromMC() or similar, omitting the width and height. Should work, I’ll have a go tonight.

  3. Manuel, on October 8th, 2008 at 1:00 pm Said:

    I did something similar and i added some basis for a compositing-aware system: feel free to use my code as well ( http://manuel.bit-fire.com/2008/09/04/compiz-like-wobbling-windows-in-as3/ ).

  4. barney, on October 11th, 2008 at 12:16 pm Said:

    hi

    did u get round to that. and chance of getting the updated source?

  5. ad, on October 12th, 2008 at 11:39 am Said:

    Yeah I got it sorted. It now spits out events too, as you’d expect it to really. I’ll have that up mid-week.

  6. barney, on October 13th, 2008 at 11:38 pm Said:

    cool thanks

  7. blackbox, on October 25th, 2008 at 8:10 pm Said:

    Is this code free to use on any project?

  8. blackbox, on October 25th, 2008 at 8:11 pm Said:

    i’ve already added content to the windows with a little modifications on it, it’s a great windows system.

  9. ad, on October 27th, 2008 at 12:27 pm Said:

    UPDATED! (at long last…) http://www.palmerama.tv/feed/2008/10/as3-window-system-updated/

  10. Darz, on September 26th, 2009 at 10:56 pm Said:

    DUDE! thank you sooo much!!!!!!!!! You saved my ass !! and oh, please do have a license because we’ll be soo mad if someone steal your great works! GOOD JOB!! KEEP IT UP!!! :D

  11. Zacky, on January 5th, 2010 at 8:45 pm Said:

    GREAT WORK DUDE!!!!

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