I found great slides on Grant Skinners blog. They give a quick introduction in AS 3 and it’s core benefits!
50 reasons why AS 3 kicks ass (Grant Skinner)
Also a must read for developers!
Update: And he also added more slides from a workshop here
Archive for the 'ActionScript' Category
Today I found something I really did not understand very well. I had to debug a application because one button displayed the handCursor and another did not. Both use the same script and actually I didn't find out why the behaviour of this buttons was like that but I fixed it through a workaround.
The first thing I understood today is, that it's possible to receive all mouse events without using buttonMode! Simply add a listener to your objects and you can work with them.
But if you like to work with a button that contains additional sprites (which might be very useful) you definitely should take care about their behaviour. By default mouse events will be dispatched by the lowest sprite, exept you set mouseChildren to false...
Have a look at this little code example:
Actionscript:
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package {
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import flash.display.Sprite;
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import flash.events.Event;
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import flash.events.MouseEvent;
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public class ButtonModeTest extends Sprite
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{
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public function ButtonModeTest()
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{
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run();
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}
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private function run(): void
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{
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//-- Start listening
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addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, onMouseEvent );
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addEventListener( MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, onMouseEvent );
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addEventListener( MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT, onMouseEvent );
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//-- Button 1 on the main stage
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var button1: Sprite = createButton( 1 );
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addChild( button1 );
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//-- Button 2 within the container
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var button2: Sprite = createButton( 2 );
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var button2Container: Sprite = new Sprite();
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button2Container.addChild( button2 );
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button2Container.x = 150;
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button2Container.name = "button2Container";
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addChild( button2Container );
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// By default the mouse events will be dispatched by the buttons themself
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// (the lowest sprites)
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// Setting containers buttonMode to true doesn't force the container to
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// dispatch the mouse events ( so what the hell is button mode?)
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button2Container.buttonMode = true;
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// Setting containers useHandCursor to true only works when it's buttonMode
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// is also true. But the events will still be dispatched from the lowest
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// sprite (even its a button!?!)
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button2Container.useHandCursor = true;
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// Only setting mouseChildren to false forces the container to dispatch
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// the mouse events
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button2Container.mouseChildren = false;
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}
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private function createButton( index: uint ): Sprite
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{
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var button: Sprite = new Sprite();
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button.name = "button" + index;
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button.graphics.beginFill( 0, 1 );
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button.graphics.drawRect( 0, 0, 100, 100 );
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button.graphics.endFill();
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return button;
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}
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private function onMouseEvent( event: Event ): void
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{
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trace( "Event (" + event.type + ") dispatched from : " + event.target.name );
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}
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}
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}
This is one of this quicknotes just for not forgetting a simple issue:While developing a "AS2Wrapper" for embeding AS2 contents in AS3 applications I recognised that _globals within the loaded AS2 SWFs still exist when you unload this SWF and load another. This seems to be quite apparent but I thought about the AVM1 as some kind of sandbox.
Grand Skinners Spell Check Engine could be really interessting for business projects. So keep it in mind!
This performance test shows how fast the ActionScript AVM2 runs compared to the AVM1, Java(!) and JavaScript: See it
