moock flash text~ticker
you've seen those little scrolling java tickers all over the web, right? used with a little propriety, tickers can be pretty nifty. if you don't know what a ticker is, make sure you have flash 4 properly installed, then look above this paragraph...see the moving text? that's a "ticker". if you want to add something like that to your movies, follow the instructions below. note that you can't easily add links with the current version of the ticker--you'd have to hand-place moving invisible buttons at the right time once you've determined the speed of your ticker.

if you use the ticker, please try to link to moock.org or acknowledge moock.org in a credits section somewhere on your site. other kids might want to play with it too.

adding the moock flash text~ticker to your movies

1. download and extract the .zipped fla file of the text~ticker.
2. open the fla file in which you want to place the text~ticker.
3. create a new layer in that movie named "moock textticker".
4. open the fla file of the text~ticker.
5. in the text~ticker fla file, you'll see a single movie clip on a layer called "moock flash ticker". copy that movie clip (select it, then do edit>>copy), and paste it onto the "moock textticker" layer of your other movie.
6. at the frame on which you placed the ticker, add a stop action. the movie must be paused while the ticker plays.
7. customize your ticker in one or all of the following ways:
   1. edit the movie clip symbol called "subroutines". once in that clip, double click the frame labeled "initTicker". select the "actions" tab. here you can set the value of 5 variables which affect the display of the ticker:
      • ticker_input: the text that will be displayed in your ticker.
      • view_window: the maximum number of characters that will be visible in your ticker at any one time. don't make this value greater than the actual width of the ticker_output variable found in the "moock flash ticker" movie clip or you'll create choppy playback.
      • message_pause: once your ticker text has come to an end, it will repeat itself at the beginning after a short pause. message_pause determines the length of that delay.
      • scroll_delay: the speed of your ticker, measured as the number of milliseconds that should pass between the display of each letter. default is 250. 0 is no delay, 1000 is one second, 2000 is two seconds, etc.
      • first_char: indicates where your text will start playing, and also where it will loop when finished. used to display only a portion of your text message without changing the entire contents of the ticker_input variable.
   2. you can change the font of the ticker by using the text tool to modify the text field variable on the "content" layer of the movie clip called "moock flash ticker". including a font with the ticker usually takes about 20k of file space. if you only need a sans-serif or other system font, select "do not include font outlines" from the text field properties (under modify>>text field). note that mono-spaced fonts (courier, lucida console, etc) look best. you can also change the area occupied by the ticker by resizing the text field.