iSpring ActionScript API

iSpring products provide PowerPoint to Flash conversion facilities on the highest level. Moreover, Flash content created with iSpring Ultra and iSpring SDK provides programmatic control facilities - it can be loaded and controlled by external Flash movies.

This article is a brief overview of the following topics:

Presentation conversion modes
Presentation playback control facilities
Slide playback control facilities
Skin development facilities

Presentation conversion modes overview

iSpring can convert PowerPoint presentations into one of the three following formats:

A Solid Flash Presentation. This is one solid Flash file containing player core, skin, preloader and presentation resources. Solid Flash presentation is the most compact type of Flash presentations. It is optimized for progressive downloading and starts playing as soon the player core, the skin and data for the first slide are loaded. However, due to Flash format limitations, it is suitable for small and medium size presentations (50-200 slides). A Solid Flash Presentation structure is shown in the following picture.

Solid Flash Presentation structure

A Compound Flash Presentation. This type of presentation consists of the playback module and a set of presentation resource files such as slides, thumbnails, sounds, presenter photo, company logo and presentation attachments. Playback module is a Flash file containing the player core, the skin and the preloader. A compound presentation structure is shown in the following picture.

Compound presentation structure

Since all presentation resources are stored in separate Flash files, the compound Flash presentation allows playback of large presentations containing hundreds of slides. Slide related resources such as fonts and images are not shared between slide files (i.e. each slide has its own copy for fonts and images) in comparison with Solid Flash presentation, so the overall size of a compound presentation is 50-120% larger than size of the corresponding solid flash presentation.

Standalone Flash Slides. Each presentation slide is converted to the standalone Flash file which can be played independently from other slides. However standalone slides do not play slide transition effects and do not perform slide switching. Standalone slides can be loaded and managed by external Flash application, so this conversion mode is mainly suitable for Flash developers. Standalone slide structure is shown in the picture below.

Standalone Slide Structure

The detailed description of the Flash Presentation Structure can be found in the following article.

iSpring Presentation Structure

Presentation playback control facilities

Flash presentations created with iSpring can be controlled programmatically. For this purposes solid and compound Flash presentations provide Flash Presentation ActionScript API, a set of ActionScript 2.0 interfaces for controlling presentation playback and navigation. The following article provides a detailed description of the Presentation API methods and interfaces.

Flash Presentation ActionScript API Reference

Slide playback control facilities

Standalone slides provide Flash Slide ActionScript API, a set of ActionScript 2.0 interfaces for controlling slide playback and navigation. The following article provides a detailed description of the Slide API.

Flash Slide ActionScript API Reference

Skin development facilities

iSpring generated presentation can be wrapped into a "skin", a special user interface module which simplify presentation navigation displaying slide thumbnails and other navigation elements. There are several predefined skins providing various UI capabilities - from the "NullSkin" having no navigation elements to the "Advanced" one.

iSpring users are not limited by the set of predefined player skins. Skin modules can be developed by any Flash developer familiar with ActionScript 2.0 and basic principles of Object oriented programming. The following article describes the skin development process

Skin Development Reference

Presentation conversion modes overview

Presentation playback control facilities

Slide playback control facilities

Skin development facilities

See also