Essential ActionScript 3.0

Chapter 28. Loading External Display Assets

In ActionScript, there are three ways to programmatically add an external display asset to an application:

• Use the flash.display.Loader class to load the asset at runtime

• Use the flash.net.Socket class in combination with the Loader class’s instance method loadBytes( ) to load the asset at runtime over a direct TCP/IP socket

• Use the [Embed] metadata tag to include the asset from the local filesystem at compile-time

The Loader and Socket classes are built-in to the Flash runtime API, while the [Embed] metadata tag requires the Flex framework. All three approaches support the following display asset formats:

• SWF (compiled Flash applications)

• JPEG, GIF, or PNG (bitmap images)

Additionally, the [Embed] metadata tag supports SVG-formatted display assets.

Note

The Loader class replaces the following ActionScript 2.0 loading tools:

• MovieClipLoader class

• loadMovie( ) and loadMovieNum( )

• global functionsMovieClip class’s instance methods loadMovie( ) and loadMovieNum( )

In this chapter, we’ll learn how to use Loader, Socket, and [Embed] to load external display assets. For information on loading fonts, see Chapter 27. For information on loading XML, see Chapter 18. For information on loading other nondisplay assets, such as variables, binary data, or sound, see the URLLoader, URLStream, and Sound class entries in Adobe’s ActionScript Language Reference.

Using Loader to Load Display Assets at Runtime

The Loader class loads an external display asset at runtime. ...