ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Adding Scripts to Movie Clips

|

405

this._alpha = transparency;

this.gotoAndPlay("fadeout");

}

// CODE ON BUTTON

on (release) {

this.title.fadeOut(20, 50);

}

Or, better yet, in Flash MX we should add an event handler to the Button instance as

follows:

theButton.onRelease = function ( ) {

this._parent.title.fadeOut(20, 50);

}

This approach keeps all of our code centralized and easy to maintain and allows us

to apply the button’s behavior to many buttons quickly and with minimal effort.

Button code must be attached to a button object on stage and must

include an event handler. Button code without an event handler will

cause an error, and it’s not possible to attach code to the internal Up,

Over, Down, and Hit frames of a button symbol.

Adding Scripts to Movie Clips

We’ve already seen that we can attach code to the frames of a movie clip’s timeline.

It is also possible to attach code to a movie clip instance itself. To do so, we select

the instance on stage and then add our code to the Script pane of the Actions panel.

As with buttons, all code attached to movie clip objects must be contained within

event handlers. Event handlers tell the interpreter when to execute the movie clip

code. For example, the following code sets the variable

x to 10 when a movie clip

loads:

onClipEvent (load) {

var x = ...