Adrian Parr’s Blog

I use SWFObject regularly to embed my SWFs in the HTML page. But was not sure how to display alternate SWFs depending on the Flash Player version installed on the end user’s machine. However, I have just come across a blog entry by David Stiller that clearly explains how to do it.

http://www.quip.net/blog/2008/flash/using-swfobject-for-more

I quite often find myself needing to find codes for special characters and then having to track down a website that lists the type of code I am after. Sometimes I need Unicode, other times I need ASCII, and other time I need URL Encoded values. Things like a list of key codes and escape sequences are also handy to have. So, to make mine (and your) life easier, I have put together a Special Characters Cheat Sheet (PDF) that lists all the characters from 0 - 255 (ASCII) and their other corresponding code values.

You can download the Special Characters Cheat Sheet (PDF) here

Here are some useful links to the Adobe Flash LiveDocs

• Keyboard Keys and Key Code Values on Adobe LiveDocs
• URL Encoding: Reading special characters from a text file

Here is a little Flash 8 (AS2) movie that displays charCodeAt, escape, getCode, getAscii and Key.CONST

Flash 8 AS2 Source Code here

In AS3 there are a few more event properties we can access such as ctrlKey, shiftKey and altKey. There are also many more static constants which are mapped to certain keys on the keyboard. Here is the Flash 9 AS3 version of the above movie.

Flash 9 AS3 Source Code here

UPDATE 20/03/09: Lee Brimlow has just made me aware of a useful online tool for converting between Unicode and other representations such as Hex, CSS Escape Sequences and Percent Encoding for URIs. The tool is called Unicode Code Converter v6 and has been written by Richard Ishida.