Flash CS3 Documentation

Extending Flash > C-Level Extensibility

C-Level Extensibility

The C-level extensibility mechanism lets you implement Adobe Flash CS3 Professional extensibility files using a combination of JavaScript and custom C code. You define functions using C, bundle them in a dynamic linked library (DLL) or a shared library, save the library in the appropriate directory, and then call the functions from JavaScript using the Adobe Flash JavaScript API.

The C-level extensibility mechanism was introduced in Macromedia Flash MX 2004, and did not change in Flash 8. The only revision in Flash CS3 is a change in the mm_jsapi.h file included in the sample DMG or ZIP file (see Sample DLL implementation).

For example, you might want to define a function that performs intense calculations more efficiently than JavaScript does, which improves performance, or when you want to create more advanced tools or effects.

This extensibility mechanism is a subset of the Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 API. If you are familiar with that API, you might recognize the functions in the C-level extensibility mechanism API. However, this API differs from the Dreamweaver API in the following ways:

• This API does not contain all the commands in the Dreamweaver API.
• All declarations of type wchar_t and char in the Dreamweaver API are implemented as unsigned short declarations in this API, to support Unicode when strings are passed.
• The JSVal JS_BytesToValue() function in this API is not part of the Dreamweaver API.
• The location in which the DLL or shared library files must be stored is different (see Integrating C functions).

Flash CS3