Adobe® Flash® CS4 Professional Bible

Chapter 24. Controlling Movie Clips

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding the MovieClip class

• Working with properties of the MovieClip class

• Creating mouse drag behaviors

• Event models explained

• Making sliders that dynamically change properties

In Chapter 18, "Building Timelines and Interactions," we established the key role that Movie Clips have within the Flash movie structure. By having a timeline that plays separately from other timelines, Movie Clips enable multiple events to occur — independently or as part of an interaction with other Movie Clips. In this chapter, we explore how to manipulate Movie Clips beyond navigation actions such as gotoAndPlay() or stop().

Note

In ActionScript 3.0, much of the functionality assigned to MovieClip instances in ActionScript 2.0 has shifted to other classes, like the Sprite class, for example. In AS3, the MovieClip class should be used for elements that specifically need a timeline, such as an animation. In AS1 or AS2, the MovieClip class still remains a central element of production.

Movie Clips: The Object Overview

Since Flash Player 5, the implementation of ActionScript has resembled that of true object-oriented programming languages. Much like JavaScript, each element in a Flash movie has a data type. A data type is simply a category to which an element belongs. In ActionScript 3.0 (and ActionScript 2.0), there are several data types available — boolean, number, string, object, function, and movieclip, among others.

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