Flash w/ Xml

[Shawn Northrop]

I have been trying to grasp XML and i cant quite wrap my mind around it. I want to create an image gallery through flash w/ dynamic images. All of the tutorials implement XML, but why? is there no way to simply load each image that is in a folder. Thus to add images one simply adds images to the folder. With XML it looks like you must write out all of the image names with appropriate tags, as well as write code to comb through your xml. To then add an image you would have to place this image in the folder and then write the new elements into the XML doc.

I have not seen how XML is useful, unless this is the only way to load the list of images. It seems very time consuming, also are XML docs usually hand written or can they be automatically generated?

anyways, it seems like its usefulness is just a little over my head.

[crabpot8]

yes, you could just add all the images you wanted and tell flash where to find the images and that would be that. if you wanted to update, or add more pics, you would have to update the flash. which sucks. i dont think flash can reaad from folders like that very well. it can get data passed to it like that, but it would be very advanced to implement. people use xml because flash has built in connectors for it. that means that to update your site or gallery all you avhe to do is change the external xml, and if you are clever with actionscript then you will always have a working, dynamic gallery that you can easily update by adding a few lines to the xml, like
<library>
<image>
<title>cat pic</title>
<url>/images/cat.jig</url>
</image>
</library>

few things to know, xml can only have one "top level" aka you can only have one "library", not two. however, if you want categories, just add a field to the image tag and use actionscript to generate them dynamically.

Basically, if you want to update your gallery at all take the time to develop and connect the XML and you will love it later. If you have one gallery that is never going to change, then yea sure hard-code the image locations inside flash and never move them

crabpot8

I have been trying to grasp XML and i cant quite wrap my mind around it. I want to create an image gallery through flash w/ dynamic images. All of the tutorials implement XML, but why? is there no way to simply load each image that is in a folder. Thus to add images one simply adds images to the folder. With XML it looks like you must write out all of the image names with appropriate tags, as well as write code to comb through your xml. To then add an image you would have to place this image in the folder and then write the new elements into the XML doc.

I have not seen how XML is useful, unless this is the only way to load the list of images. It seems very time consuming, also are XML docs usually hand written or can they be automatically generated?

anyways, it seems like its usefulness is just a little over my head.

[Shawn Northrop]

that was helpful, thanks