ActionScript: The Definitive Guide

Name

tellTarget( ) Global Function — execute statements in the scope of a remote movie clip

Availability

Flash 3 and Flash 4; deprecated in Flash 5 in favor of object-oriented syntax or the with statement

Synopsis

tellTarget (target) {
        statements
}

Arguments

target

A string or reference indicating the path to a movie or movie clip instance (references are converted to paths when used in a string context).

statements

The statements to be executed in the scope of target.

Description

In Flash 3 and Flash 4, tellTarget( ) was the primary means of communicating between two movie clips (i.e., controlling one from the other). It was used to invoke functions such as play( ), stop( ), and gotoAndStop( ) on remote movie clips. In Flash 4, when variables were added to ActionScript, we could also use tellTarget( ) to get and set remote clip variable values. In Flash 5, these endeavors are better accomplished with the dot operator, ., and the array access operator, []. Another alternative to the tellTarget( ) function is the with statement, described in Chapter 6.

Usage

The tellTarget( ) function may be better described as a statement because it requires a substatement block. The point, however, is academic, as tellTarget( ) has been deprecated.

Example

tellTarget ("ball") {
  gotoAndStop("redStripes");
  _x += 300;
}

See Also

Section 6.3.9 " in Chapter 6; Section 13.5.7 and Section 13.1 in Chapter 13