User Interface Components
Flash Remoting complements the client-side UI components of the Flash authoring environment. This rigorously pretested set of components, all based on the FUIComponentClass class, brings the familiar user interface elements of HTML to the Flash developer’s arsenal. The UI components expose an API that is easy to use and consistent across components.
Prior to Flash MX, you could create movie clips that acted as reusable user-interface controls (a.k.a. Smart Clips), but they were harder to use than Flash’s UI components. You can simply drag UI components from the Components panel onto your interface or create new instances programmatically in ActionScript by using the MovieClip.attachMovie( ) method (assuming the Library contains the desired component symbol).
UI components add size to the final Flash movie, but the benefits of using the components far outweigh the downside. In addition, after adding an element of one type to the movie, each additional element of that type does not increase the movie size; your movie is roughly the same size whether you use one ListBox or ten ListBoxes.
Tip
Flash 2004 and Flash Pro components share a larger common framework (which provides enhanced accessibility, focus management, and so on) than did Flash MX components. The Flash 2004/Pro framework is optimized for movies that include multiple components. If you’re including only one or two components and download size is critical, you may prefer to manually implement custom ...
Get Flash Remoting: The Definitive Guide now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
