Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

10/21/05

Flash Text Fileds and HTML Tags in Pachyderm 2.0

Filed under: Project Development, Pachyderm, Flash — timwang @ 11:37:20 pm

Pachyderm 1.0 was constructed based on Flash 5 technology and html tags were not well supported back then. Over the last few years, Macromedia has made many improvements over this issue. HTML tags can now be freely and safely parsed to any dynamic text fields. Upon the delivery of Pachyderm 2.0 re-coded templates, we are now "turning on" the HTML tag support switches for the text fields in all Pachyderm 2.0 implementation.

One challenge we have had is that Pachyderm uses XML files to store all dynamic data. When the author includes standard HTML tags in the text information, the tag "html code bold" is first converted into "&#60b&#62", then stored into the XML file for the data constancy. We have constructed a "field switch" to allow the dynamic text fields to parse the correct HTML tags. So far this method is working great. The result is quite impressive. However Larry Johnson noticed that the "html code link" tag does not change the font into standard navy blue color with the underline. However, he has figured a work around by using html code to convert the link text into blue and underlined. The result? Makes you want to click on it!


Journey Education

Comments:

Comment from: D'Arcy Norman [Visitor] · http://www.darcynorman.net
Tim, sounds great! What's the "field switch"? Is it something we need to put into the screen's xml file? Would wrapping the text in a CDATA block help as well?
PermalinkPermalink 10/22/05 @ 10:40
Comment from: timwang [Member] Email · http://blog.loaz.com/timwang
D'Arcy, no need to change the XML. It's build in Flash. Liang explained that when you construct the xml file you have to convert all html tags to ASCII code for data constancy. We are now redefining the text field types to convert the ASCII code back to normal HTML tags. It is working fine on the Enlargement screen.
PermalinkPermalink 10/22/05 @ 13:54
Comment from: D'Arcy Norman [Visitor] · http://www.darcynorman.net
Sweet. Thanks for the update. So... will the "Mav" templates be thus updated? :-) Currently, I get to go in after publishing and manually tweak each xml file that tries to contain html so that it renders properly. It'd sure be nice to be able to skip that step on 1400 screens of xml times 2 languages :-)
PermalinkPermalink 10/24/05 @ 00:17
Comment from: timwang [Member] Email · http://blog.loaz.com/timwang
We will get discuss this this week and it shouldn't be a problem. It's not a hard change.
PermalinkPermalink 10/24/05 @ 00:58

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