I realize a few people have already written their own JSFL wrapper classes and even distributed them to the Flash community. However, after getting back into building SWF panels for the IDE I thought of a better way to create new panels and test them.

Instead of creating my FLAs in the Flash Configuration\WindowSWF folder all the time, or setting the publish settings to this directory, or using a batch file to do copies all the time, I made a simple loader SWF, and WindowSWFLoader was born.

WindowSWFLoader is a SWF panel that you open in the Flash authoring environment. Once opened, press the Load link and select the SWF you want to load into that panel to replace _level0. Your SWF can be anywhere on your system - it doesn’t have to be in the WindowSWF directory. This is SO much better for testing, especially when all you want to do is test an idea out. You could even start a new FLA without saving it, publish it, and then load the untitledX.swf from the temp folder … ok, so that’s not stupendous, but it means you can easily test SWF panel ideas.

Now the trick is that to be useful, it can’t simply load a new SWF into _level0. WindowSWFLoader will reload the menu into _level10541 when you hover your mouse inside the top 5 pixels. You can then load a new SWF or reload the same one. You also have the option of “Reincarnate”, which just reloads the WindowSWFLoader main SWF in case you have issues with your SWF or such.

[EDIT]
The JSFL wrapper class has some … problems. Originally it was written to help me with some of the work I did in the past. However, after revisiting for some new tasks I realized some glaringly dumb mistakes. If you’ve already downloaded and tried to use the wrapper - sorry. For some methods it works great. For others it fails badly. The wrapper will be back, but it will be more thoroughly tested with examples.

The WindowSWFLoader still works nicely by speeding up test time. If anyone catches any issues with that please let me know. I’d really like to make something that everyone will find useful.

If you find any bugs in WindowSWFLoader just drop-in a comment below. Constructive criticism is appreciated.

Go to the Downloads page to get WindowSWFLoader.