ActionScript: The Definitive Guide

Preface

This book teaches both ActionScript’s fundamentals and its advanced usage. Over the next 675 meaty pages, we’ll be exploring every detail of the ActionScript language—from the basics of variables and movie clip control to advanced topics such as objects and classes, server communication, and XML. By the end, we’ll have covered everything there is to know about Flash programming.

This book is not just for programmers. The text moves pretty quickly, but a prior knowledge of programming is not required to read it. All you need is experience with the non-ActionScript aspects of Flash and an eagerness to learn. Of course, if you are already a programmer, so much the better; you’ll be applying your code-junkie skills to ActionScript in no time.

This book fully documents the material that may be undocumented or underdocumented by Macromedia or by other third-party books. Flash is notorious for word-of-mouth techniques and esoteric features. How are layers, movie clips, and loaded movies stacked in the Player? (See Chapter 13.) What governs the execution order of code on any given frame? (See Chapter 13.) Do event handlers have a local scope? (See Chapter 10.) Why does the number 90 sometimes show up as 89.9999999997? (See Chapter 4.) It has been my particular goal to chart these unknown waters. Of course, I also cover the basic programming techniques required in any language, such as how to make a segment of code execute repeatedly. (See Chapter 8.)

This book is designed to be kept ...