Flash Stage Losing Focus

Question

I built this incredibly brilliant scrolling thumbnail image viewer for a client in flash actionscript 3. (Basically it just scrolls up or down depending on the mouse position). It works so so, (I can never get the percentages right so that it shows the top most image) but, that's beside the point. What is REALLY irking me is when I have the browser window open with my .swf loaded and I click on another app on my desktop, the stupid scrolling thumbnail area in the browser window starts to freak out.

"Where is my mouseY??!?!?!?" I assume it is thinking.

Is there a stage.Unfocus event I can tell my scrolling thumbnail area to STFU with?

I'd even consider writing some javascript to call a flash function, if that's a preferred technique. Thanks in advance.

function checkMousePos(e:Event):void
{ 
  if(mouseX < 145){
    try{
        var sHeight:int = MovieClip(root).stageHeight;
    }catch(Error){
        trace("stage not loaded");
    }
    if(mouseY > (sHeight/2) + 100){
        if(tHolder.y-50 > - (compHeight-sHeight)){
            Tweener.addTween(tHolder, {y:tHolder.y - 90, time:1,transition:"easeOutCubic"});
        }
        }else if(mouseY < (sHeight/2) - 100){
            if(tHolder.y+50 < 80){
            Tweener.addTween(tHolder, {y:tHolder.y + 90, time:1,transition:"easeOutCubic"});
            }else{
               Tweener.addTween(tHolder, {y:80, time:1,transition:"easeOutCubic"});
            }
        }
    }
}

-J

Answer 1

stage.addEventListener(Event.MOUSE_LEAVE, function(e:Event):void {});

Answer 2

Hi,

I suggest detecting the window focus events onblur and onfocus ( http://www.devguru.com/technologies/ecmascript/quickref/evHan_onBlur.html ) in Javascript then sending an enable / disable call through to the SWF file using ExternalInterface ( http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/flash/external/ExternalInterface.html ) So inside your HTML you might have something like this (assuming swfobject here, but this isn't necessary http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/ ):

swfobject.embedSWF("mySWF", "mySWFId", swfWidth, swfHeight, "10.0.0", "", flashvars, params, attributes);

window.onblur=function () {
    if ( document.getElementById("mySWFId").disableMouseScrolling) {
        document.getElementById("mySWFId").disableMouseScrolling();
    }
}

window.onfocus=function () {
    if ( document.getElementById("mySWFId").enableMouseScrolling ) {
        document.getElementById("mySWFId").enableMouseScrolling();
    }
}

And inside your SWF file some equivalent ExternalInterface code to hook up the methods:

public class MyApplication extends ...
{
    public function MyApplication ():void
    {
        ExternalInterface.addCallback("disableMouseScrolling", disableMouseScrolling);
        ExternalInterface.addCallback("disableMouseScrolling", enableMouseScrolling);
        ...
    }
    private function disableMouseScrolling ():void
    {
    }
    private function enableMouseScrolling ():void
    {
    }
    ...
}

Hope this helps. I've used it with IE8, Firefox 3 and Crome 4.

Regards,