Flash Components

Over the years, we've put together a few Flash components that have been useful across several projects. They're now available free (LGPL) for anyone to use as they find helpful!

CPU Detector

A simple CPU detector component. If you need to selectively decide content based on the speed of your user's machine, this component can give you a ballpark (in MHz) of what sort of CPU you're dealing with.

Bandwidth Detector/Preloader

Will tell you what speed the user's connection is working at. The component will also take a best-guess at what sort of connection you're dealing with (Modem, ISDN, Cable, T1+).

Preloading has been the bane of Flash programmers for years. This preloader component (after years of self-rolled variations and updates) is essentially a graphical shell wrapped around a lightly modified version of Ralf Bokelberg's preloader script. Fairly robust, and works well.

Console

Often, it's useful to be able to interact with a complex movie after it's been published, and outside the Flash environment. That's where the console comes in. It's similar to a unix-style console, only with far fewer commands, and a log-like ability. To send information to the console, you can call the "superTrace()" function.

Caveat

These components are all open, and free, and I don't make any guarantees that they'll work perfectly (or at all) for your needs. They're probably most useful as code examples, to see how this sort of thing can be done.