a4uExpo Speakers Dynamic Flash Carousel

I’ve just finished implimenting a really cool flash application for the a4uexpo site to showcase all of our speakers. The carousel application draws in external thumbnails and data from an xml file and loads the data into Flash, in assigned placeholders. This makes the whole thing totally dynamic and very easy to update.

The basics were covered by an awesome tutorial by Lee Brimlow on gotoandlearn.com and the way it is explained is very in depth. I’ll be honest it still baffles me abit just how he can think these scripts up but hats off to the guy he really knows his stuff.

The only sticking point to this tutorial was adding url links to each person in the xml file. I searched the forums for ages before i found a solution. So if anyone is thinking of using this script and wants to know how the external hyperlinks were done here goes:

1. Add - t.linkURL = nodes[i].attributes.link; - into the loop

2. Add - getURL(this._parent.linkURL, “_blank”); - into the function released state

3. Add - link=”replace with yourlink.com” - into the xml file

Hope thats helpful, thought it would be good to share as it took me ages to find that out. This will only work if your using Lee’s tutorial and naming scheme however.

If your not familiar with Lee’s work definatly check out gotoandlearn.com, it really is very helpful.