Watch “Export in First Frame” when creating components

I ran into some odd problems with our custom components today. I had a set of components and when I included one component and used it everything was fine but when I included a second related component the first stopped working. Similar things happenned if I had the SWCs marked as export in first frame, which is set to on by default when you drag in a SWC from the component panel. With everything turned on some didn’t work, but with only some turned on they did.

With a little help from ASV Chafic was able to identify the problem as being related to extra symbols in the component SWFs (the ones inside the SWCs). Some components had symbols in there that they didn’t use. It turned out this was because in the original source FLA from which I created the SWCs, some random symbols had Export in First Frame checked (which is default when you set something to Export for ActionScript).

With this checked the symbols were included in the SWF even though they weren’t used by the component. Then when another component was used that did need these symbols, they weren’t imported properly.

So, to summarize this long story in one short sentence: Make sure nothing has “Export in First Frame” checked when creating components in Flash MX 2004.

9 thoughts on “Watch “Export in First Frame” when creating components”

Wow. I ran into the exact same thing today. I made one component, and it worked fine. Made a second one in the same fla and both stopped working. I was going insane after rebuilding both almost from scratch. Finally I noticed that I had the bounding box mc set to export. Unchecked that and all was fine. Any insight onto WHY this happens? I don’t get that at all.

i experience this from time to time too… what i have realized though is that this happens to me when I have 1-frame swfs that have slightly heavy processing.

when i allow a couple of “buffer” frames with the same flas, i seem to overcome the problem. still, it is quirky. i’ll experiment with your suggestions here

I have also had the same problem, even when things are not set to export on Frame1.

This is so common in the end I have resorted to only having one component per fla.

Even then I stil get problems from time to time with the generated swc’s NOT picking up changes I made in the fla (testing works fine in the fla but just the exported version wont update), to fix this when it happens I have to create a new fla and copy all the library items to the new fla and the generate the swc.

Another quirk I have come across with 2004 components is in the “extends” clause.
For example try the following

import com.me.y;
class com.me.comp.x extends y

import com.me.y;
class com.me.comp.x extends com.me.y

In the former everything is Ok but in the later you will find that no inherited properties show up in the component inspector, however your component works fine and actually has the correct inheritance.