The "deploy" folder

After you extract the compressed zip archive “Aspire_UI_Set_x_version.zip”, you will find two folders - “deploy” and “install”.

In the “deploy” folder, you will find a folder named “assets”. This folder contains the skin assets that are used by Flash applications using the Aspire UI library.

Flash applications using the Aspire UI library load and use external skin assets during run-time, rather than embedding them into the compiled SWF. This has several advantages over the traditional method of skinning, such as

• the file size of the compiled SWF itself will be smaller and compiling is faster;
• skin assets can be modified without having to re-compile the Flash application;
• skin assets can be shared among different Flash applications and/or distributed as themes;
• for online applications, skin assets can be cached by the browser; and
• for offline applications, it is possible for end-users to create their own skin assets.

However, this also means that the “assets” folder must be deployed alongside the Flash application so that the external files can be loaded during run-time.

For the purpose of documentation, tutorials and other articles on this website, when we mention the “deploy” folder, we mean the project folder from which you are working from, where the compiled SWF will reside and the above mentioned “assets” folder exists.

The following shows the anatomy of the “deploy” folder¹⁾:

• C:\Users\user\aspireui\deploy\
  • HelloWorld.as (the ActionScript 3.0 class file used during compiling, DO NOT deploy/upload)
  • HelloWorld.fla (the Adobe Flash file used during compiling, DO NOT deploy/upload)
  • HelloWorld.swf (the compiled SWF, to be deployed/uploaded)
  • assets\
    • images\ (folder containing images used in your application, loaded via the uiImage class)
    • skins\ (folder containing various themes)
      • default\ (folder containing the default theme)
        • rules.xml (XML file defining settings for each skin asset)
        • rules.theme.xml (not used, for back up only)
        • text.css (CSS file defining text styles used in application, will be loaded by uiTextStyles)
        • text.theme.css (not used, for back up only)
        • *.png (bitmap PNG files used as skin assets)
      • theme_1\ (alternative theme, deployed only if necessary)
      • theme_2\ (alternative theme, deployed only if necessary)
      • theme_3\ (alternative theme, deployed only if necessary)