ActionScript: The Definitive Guide

Applied Movie Clip Examples

We’ve now learned the fundamentals of movie clip programming. Let’s put our knowledge to use by creating two very different applications, both of which exemplify the typical role of movie clips as basic content containers.

Building a Clock with Clips

In this chapter we learned how to create movie clips with attachMovie( ) and how to set movie clip properties with the dot operator. With these relatively simple tools and a little help from the Date and Color classes, we have everything we need to make a clock with functional hour, minute, and second hands.

First, we’ll make the face and hands of the clock with the following steps (notice that we don’t place the parts of our clock on the main Stage—our clock will be generated entirely through ActionScript):

1. Start a new Flash movie.

2. Create a movie clip symbol named clockFace that contains a 100-pixel-wide black circle shape.

3. Create a movie clip symbol named hand that contains a 50-pixel-long, vertical red line.

4. Select the line in hand, then choose Window → Panels → Info.

5. Position the bottom of the line at the center of the clip by setting the line’s x-coordinate to and its y-coordinate to -50.

Now we have to export our clockFace and hand symbols so that instances of them can be attached dynamically to our movie:

1. In the Library, select the clockFace clip, then select Options → Linkage. The Symbol Linkage Properties dialog box appears.

2. Select Export This Symbol.

3. In the Identifier box, type clockFace and then click OK. ...