Special Edition Using® Macromedia® Studio 8

Chapter 12. ActionScripting for Motion Graphics

In this chapter

• Drawing API 256

• Programmatic Movement (Animating with ActionScript) 262

• Troubleshooting 264

• Best Practices—When to Use with 264

Drawing API

Flash comes with a drawing API (application programming interface). The drawing API is simply a set of movie clip methods that enable you to draw lines, curves, and shapes with fills programmatically with ActionScript.

When Flash saves images in a vector graphics file format, information about the vector shapes in the document is saved as areas of color that are defined by lines and curves. In the authoring environment, you define these lines and shapes with the drawing tools directly on the stage. With ActionScript, you can define the lines and fills ...