Move around a transparent AIR window

Some things are made out to be more complex than they have to be. If you want an Adobe AIR application without a standard window frame ("chrome" as they call it) then you have to manage allowing the user to move the window around yourself, as well as a way to close the app. It's harder to find a simple example than it should be.

// $background and $close can be any mouse-active 
//    display object on the stage, of course

// close the app on clicking a button
$close.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, closeApp);
function closeApp(ev:MouseEvent) 
{
 var myWindow:NativeWindow = this.stage.nativeWindow;
 if (myWindow) myWindow.close();
}

// drag app around
$background.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, startMove);
function startMove(ev:MouseEvent) 
{
 var myWindow:NativeWindow = this.stage.nativeWindow;
 if (myWindow) myWindow.startMove();
}

You can do a lot more than that, of course.

Access variables passed from HTML in AS3

In AS2 accessing variables passed into Flash from a web page was as easy as referencing _root.{whatever}. AS3 makes things a little more complicated. Why? Just because. Deal with it.

// myVariable is the name of a var passed to the SWF, as in
//     <EMBED ...>FlashVars="myVariable=Hello"
//        or even
//     mymovie.swf?myVariable=Hello

var myVariable:String = LoaderInfo(loaderInfo).parameters["myVariable"] || "defaultValue";
trace(myVariable);
// "Hello"

While working in the IDE, or if the page doesn't supply the proper variable, the "parameters" object property will be undefined. It's always best to set a default value, which is what that

|| "defaultValue"

bit is about.

If you have a lot of variables you need to access... well first off you should consider reading an XML file for configuration, but if that's too much trouble, try this, just for convenience:

var flashVars:Object = new Object();
for (var name in LoaderInfo(loaderInfo).parameters) {
     this[name] = LoaderInfo(loaderInfo).parameters[name];
     }
// now you can access variables like:
trace(this.myVariable);
// very much like the old AS2 _root.myVariable