Flash Locator Panel

Hot on the heels of my Flash/GoogleMaps mashup comes this extension for Flash. This was created as an easy way to add points to the GMap component and is great if your not planning on making your map dynamic but instead want to add static points.

‘Locator’ is pretty much a slimmed down version of the mashup packaged into an extension. It allows you to enter a location into the search field and see the Latitude and Longitude aswell as its position on a map. This is still in beta mode but is available for download.

Creating the extension was pretty simple, after following a tutorial by Lee Brimelow over at gotoAndLearn.com. The idea is that you create the extension as a normal swf file. You then use an mxi file (xml with a different extension) along with Adobe Extension manager to package it.

You can see my mxi file below if you want to use it as a template:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<macromedia-extension

  name="Locator"

  version="1.0"

  type="flashpanel"

  requires-restart="true">

 <author name="Leon Barrett" />

 <products>

   <product name="Flash" version="8" primary="true" />

 </products>

 <description>

 <![CDATA[

A tool to find the Latitude and Longitude of a location, using the GoogleMaps Geocode service.
Use this with the GMaps component to add points to your maps easily

 ]]>

 </description>

 <ui-access>

 <![CDATA[

 Access the Location panel by selecting 'Window > Other Panels > Movie Setup'.

 ]]>

 </ui-access>

<license-agreement>

 <![CDATA[

 ]]>

 </license-agreement>

 <files>

 <file source="Locator.swf" destination="$flash/WindowSWF" />

 </files>

</macromedia-extension>

Download the extension here. Like I said this is still in beta so don’t sue me if it crashes your machine!!