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.

Built-in Classes and Objects

|

435

Built-in Classes and Objects

This Language Reference assumes that you understand the terms class, object, and

instance, as discussed exhaustively in Chapter 12. The built-in classes of ActionScript

are used to create objects that can control a movie and manipulate data. The built-in

ActionScript classes added in Flash MX include:

Button

Function

LocalConnection

LoadVars

TextField

TextFormat

They join the Array, Boolean, Button, Color, Date, MovieClip, Number, Object,

Sound, String, XML, XMLnode, and XMLSocket classes, which were also supported

in Flash 5.

The MovieClip class is enhanced substantially in Flash 6. Most nota-

bly, an entire Drawing API and support for button events have been

added.

To create an instance of a particular class, we use the class’s constructor function

with the new operator. For example, to make a new object of the Color class, we use

the Color constructor as follows:

theColor = new Color(_root);

For each class entry in the Language Reference, the Constructor subheading shows how

to create new objects of that particular class (i.e., it demonstrates each class’s construc-

tor function syntax). The class entry also includes a summary of the properties,

_highquality

†

The rendering quality of the Player

Infinity A constant representing the ...