Chapter 5. Scope

ATTEMPTING TO CORRECTLY target objects in Flash often creates ActionScript bugs for new Flash developers. Flash’s reliance on movie timelines can make it hard to understand scope, or where variables can be referenced within the code. But it’s not just the timeline—the inner workings of a SWF file are unlike any other language. Scope issues in Flash can be confusing because of the complex arrangement of the timeline, movie clips, movie clips embedded in movie clips, buttons, buttons embedded in movie clips, and so on.

Luckily, the introduction of the display list and class-based architecture in ActionScript 3 eliminate most of the scope issues that were a problem in ActionScript 2. And as covered in Chapter 3, packages and classes ...

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