Actionscript Cookbook

8.15. Responding to Scroll Events

Problem

You want to have some actions performed when a text field’s contents are scrolled.

Solution

Define the text field’s onScroller( ) event handler method. Alternatively, you can use a listener object.

Discussion

When a text field is scrolled vertically or horizontally (meaning that the scroll or hscroll property has been changed either by your custom ActionScript code or by a scrollbar), the onScroller( ) method is automatically invoked. By default, a text field’s onScroller( ) method is undefined, but you can assign it a reference to a function:

myTextField.onScroller = function (  ) {
  trace("text is scrolled");
};

You can also create listener objects for a text field that are notified when the text is scrolled. Listener objects can be any kind of object, such as another text field, a movie clip, or a custom object type. You should define an onScroller( ) method for the listener object, then register the object to the text field using the addListener( ) method. Call the addListener( ) method from the text field and pass it a parameter that references the listener object (the object with onScroller( ) defined). For example:

myListener = new Object(  );
myListener.onScroller = function (  ) {
  // Actions go here.
};
myTextField.addListener(myListener);

You can add multiple listeners to one text field. Working with listeners is a powerful technique because it allows you to define actions that should occur on multiple objects when a text field is changed ...