The uiImage component is used to display an image (JPG/PNG/GIF). The path to the image is specified by the source property. By default, the uiImage object will attempt to load resources from the “assets/images/” folder (path is relative to the application SWF). To load from a different path, for example the folder “resources/images/”, prefix the source with “url:”, example “url:resources/images/garden.jpg”.

In order to load images from a different domain, the Flash Player will need to read a crossdomain.xml file from the foreign domain (and this file must grant permission to your domain to access the required resources). Typically, you would expect to need to specify a checkPolicyFile property somewhere. In the case of the uiImage component, there is no checkPolicyFile property to set because this would be unnecessary.

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In this post, we look at three different pairs of width and height properties that are commonly misunderstood – “stage.width/stage.height“, “stage.stageWidth/stage.stageHeight” and “loaderInfo.width/loaderInfo.height“.

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By domain locking (or site locking), we are restricting the SWF to be run only from a certain domain, ie the SWF should execute normally only if it has been viewed from a certain domain. If it is loaded from other domains, the SWF should execute in an alternative manner – perhaps not run at all, or run with limited features (as the developer deems appropriate). This is usually done to prevent unauthorized re-distributions of SWF files.

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The technique discussed below is fairly easy to implement and will cost nothing other than a few minutes of your time. You can use this method in conjunction with code obfuscation, encryption or whatever other protection methods – this just adds another layer of protection. While this isn’t going to be a 100% foolproof protection, it is nevertheless better than no protection at all, and should help to deter most if not all casual decompiling.

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When building modular Flash applications, a common error that may be encountered is that related to accessing a property or method of the stage property when it is still null. If a display object is not yet added to the display list, its stage property returns null.

An ActionScript error has occurred: “Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.”

Quite a cryptic message, especially if you test the module SWF standalone and nothing seems wrong, but the error is thrown when you load the module SWF into a host SWF.

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