<mx:Script>
	<![CDATA[

		private function onHtmlComplete():void {
			var title:String = html.domWindow.document.title;
		}

	]]>
</mx:Script>

<mx:HTML id="html" complete="onHtmlComplete()" />

Every time a new page is loaded this event fires and it is possible to get the new title.

I started with the following:

<mx:SWFloader source="http://www.example.com/external.swf" complete="loadComplete(event)" />

The first security sandbox error was about external.swf not being able to access the stage property. A quick view of the SWFLoader documentation lead to adding the trustContent property:

<mx:SWFloader source="http://www.example.com/external.swf" complete="loadComplete(event)" trustContent="true" />

After switching debugging to a local server on http://flex so that it wasn’t running in the local security sandbox, the stage error went away.

However, I ended up with a very strange URL not found error along the lines of ‘Error #2035: URL Not Found. URL: http://flex/[[IMPORT]]/www.example.com/external2.swf’. Looked like the third-party SWF was in turn trying to load a further SWF. After discussions with the developers, it turned out they were loading another SWF from the same location by using the LoaderInfo.url property.

Digging around in the SWFLoader source, reading lots of documentation about Flash’s security model and lots of unsuccessful searching lead me to what appears to be an undocumented feature. When the external content was imported into my application’s SecurityDomain the loader URL is changed to the one shown above with [[import]] in it. This means that their URL building was failing to produce the correct URL.

The solution was to remove the trustContent property so that the content wasn’t loaded into the security domain. Initially the stage error came back but by adding Security.allowDomain(‘www.example.com’) allowed the loaded SWF access to the stage. The same could have been achieved with a crossdomain.xml, I would have thought.

Creating the System Tray Icon

Within the WindowedApplication we can embed a graphic to be used as the icon. I’m using a 16 x 16 PNG with full alpha transparency.

[Embed(source="icons/tray.png")]

private var TrayIcon:Class;

By attaching a handler to the initialize event, an instance of the embedded image is created (cast to a Bitmap) and the bitmap data extracted. This data can then be assigned to the array of icons for the application. I’m also setting the tooltip text. This code is wrapped inside a check that the system support system tray icons.

if (NativeApplication.supportsSystemTrayIcon) {
    var trayIcon:BitmapData = Bitmap(new TrayIcon()).bitmapData;
    SystemTrayIcon(nativeApplication.icon).bitmaps = [trayIcon];
    SystemTrayIcon(nativeApplication.icon).tooltip = 'This text will appear when hovering over the icon';
}

The icon also supports event handlers for various ScreenMouseEvent types, meaning you can handle clicks, right clicks and so on, depending on your requirements.

Creating a Context Menu

The context menu for the tray icon is created as a standard NativeMenu (with a number of NativeMenuItem items) and then assigned as the menu for the icon. The sample below defined a menu with an exit option which is handled by a separate handler function.

var menu:NativeMenu = new NativeMenu();

var exitMenuItem:NativeMenuItem = new NativeMenuItem("Exit");
exitMenuItem.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, exitApplication);
menu.addItem(exitMenuItem);

SystemTrayIcon(nativeApplication.icon).menu = menu;

The menu will now appear on a right click on the tray icon, there is no need to explicitly wire this interaction together.