With the new Flash 8, I’ve been experimenting with the new ’save and load’ features. With all my Flash activities, one massive area that has been lacking has been the ability to save and load data. Flash is fantastic for building an interesting and eye-catching environment, ideal as it allows you to setup the screen exactly as you want - specific to students’ needs.
See all the new features in Flash 8 on the Macromedia website
However, unless the task can be easily completed in one lesson, the limitations of Flash are clear to see. Or rather, were clear to see. In the past I’ve experimented with Flash SharedObjects, the Flash equivalent of internet cookies. I’ve used them extensively with my Interactive Diagrams. Here a user types their data in and presses ‘Save diagram’ to store the diagram data. This is fine when a student uses it at home, but potentially very confusing when they use it at school. Unless they return to the very computer they were using, no data will be available to them.
When I developed my Interactive Storyboards it became clear that whilst the activity is really useful in itself, to make it work effectively it really needed to allow students to save their work easily. I put together various solutions, but these all basically meant a student had to copy and paste data. I put together a function that produced a Word document with the data in, but to load it again students had to copy and paste from Word into the Storyboard. This simply wasn’t practical enough - the application just needed the ability to save and load files by pressing a button, without fiddling around.
Anyway, with the latest version of Flash, Flash 8, a new functionality has been added that allows you to save and load files to a server. Currently this seems mostly to be used for loading images - as can be seen on this excellent tutorial from Flash-db.com. What I have done, mainly with the help of the Flash-db message board is adapt their guidance and have managed to put together a Flash application with the ability to save and load files easily.
The main problem has been that due to sensible security features, Flash cannot directly access a user’s local computer. This makes sense as otherwise you’d be opening up massive security issues, but it thus makes saving and loading files quite complicated. The key issue is that even it it is complicated to program, as long as it is simple for the end user, I’ve been able to meet my aim.
It isn’t quite finished yet as I’m still experimenting with it - and it doesn’t seem to work fantastically well on a Mac. It allows users to save and load .txt files which store the interactive diagram data via loadVars. I’m delighted with the potential of this solution. To save, Flash triggers a php function to save the current work to my server using loadVars, and then Flash saves this file to the local computer via a dialog box. To load, Flash triggers a dialog box where the user picks a .txt file, this is uploaded to the server and then the data is passed to Flash via loadVars.
So, with a mixture of php and the new functionality in Flash 8, I think I’m nearly there. Feel free to try the potential solution out. 
6 responses so far ↓
1 Andrew Field // Oct 29, 2005 at 4:08 pm
I’m currently looking to do three things before I release these properly on the SchoolHistory.co.uk site.
1. Need to implement a system that tracks which version of Flash the user has and then helps them install Flash 8. I’ve experimented with the new install system from Macromedia, but it didn’t work for me. Just needs a little more work.
2. Improve the design of the storyboard - remove these extra pages when the user presses ’save’ or ‘load’. In the example, these are merely test pages.
3. See if I can improve the Mac support - on my own Mac Mini it works fine, but other Mac users have reported issues. I think this is due to a delay between writing the file to the server and then dialog box appearing - the dialog box appears too quickly it seems.
2 Ian Grove-Stephensen // Oct 30, 2005 at 10:31 pm
I’ve seen Interactive Storyboard and I am hugely impressed. For the last four years we’ve been trying to find a way to put the classic Chalkface worksheet online; in many ways you have succeeded where we have (so far) failed. You have mixed relevant stimulus material with an interactive activity that really engages.
Of course I would still like to see this server-based, because you can do so much more with the data once you have centrally stored and managed - but we’ve had this debate before!
Ian
3 Andrew Field // Oct 30, 2005 at 11:02 pm
Thanks Ian.
It is certainly possible to make the save / load server based, but as you know I’m keen to make sure that students are able to save their work to a .txt file on their own computer or user area.
My problem with making it all server based is that I’ll need to setup accounts for students to use - and I don’t really want to handle thousands of accounts. I’ll also rapidly end up with thousands of small .txt files stored on the site. With the above solution it does use the server to parse the .txt file, but then it is saved visibly so students can see they’ve actually got something.
Depending on how well my current idea goes though I’ll bear your suggestions in mind
4 James Ellington // Nov 11, 2005 at 8:42 am
Wow i like the site.
“Need to implement a system that tracks which version of Flash the user has and then helps them install Flash 8. I’ve experimented with the new install system from Macromedia, but it didn’t work for me. Just needs a little more work.”
Where did you get the installer that didn’t work?
5 Andrew Field // Nov 11, 2005 at 11:42 pm
This ‘installer’ isn’t really an installer. It is the technique that we are meant to be able to use to automatically detect which version of Flash a user has installed.
For example, if a school has Flash 7 installed, when the students visit the new version of the storyboard they will be informed that the activity requires Flash 8.
I’ve experimented a little with this Flash detection kit, but thus far haven’t had much success. This is more my fault than anything wrong with the kit though
See here for details:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashplayer/download/detection_kit/
As it states there, this script is actually built into the Flash 8 authoring program. However, when I’ve tried to use it, I’ve manually uninstalled my Flash player, visited the storyboards activity and it hasn’t asked me to install the latest player.
Thus I still need to do a little more work with it.
6 Andrew Field // Jun 25, 2006 at 6:05 pm
After a long gap - developing other things - I’ve now updated the storyboards. I’m very pleased with this now:
http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/storyboards/olivercromwell.shtml
Here the user can save and load their files and it doesn’t mess around. The only thing left to fix is the fact that a user can change the filename and it causes problems when they do this.
The marvellous Flash-DB.com offered me a solution ages ago - I will now experiment with it.
See here