BrowserStatusBar

I’ve always wanted a way to tell the browser status bar what link I am going to send my user to inside of my flash applications. So I build a class that does. I call it: BrowserStatusBar

BrowserStatusBar lets you register events to update the status bar of the browser, you can also add text fields to update the status bar when a link is hovered over and display the url. It uses weak references for everything so GC shouldn’t be an issue.

pretty simple:

import com.crp.utils.BrowserStatusBar;
BrowserStatusBar.registerEvent(myMovieClip, MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, "www.google.com");
BrowserStatusBar.registerEvent(myMovieClip, MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT, "");
BrowserStatusBar.registerTextField(myTextField);


This class uses the ExternalInterface, so there is a small javascript file as well. It’s just one function that will actually change the status bar text. There is one huge setback though…

Most web browser by default don’t let code change the status bar text :(
Well its a nice usability thing to add if the user has a browser setup for it.

How To Allow Code To Update The Status Bar:
FireFox: Tools -> Options -> Content (tab) -> Advanced (adjacent to Enable Javascript) -> Change Status Bar Text (check)
IE: Tools -> Internet Options -> Security (tab) -> Custom Level -> Allow Status Bar Updates Via Script (radio)

To Download it click here
Example (comes with download)