0.6 Digging deeper into actionscript events

Table of contents

• Preface
  • General
  • Viewing tip
    • Figures
    • Listings
  • Supplemental material
• General background information
• Preview
• Discussion and sample code
  • The program named ActivateEvent01
  • The program named Effects03
• Run the program
• Resources
• Complete program listings
• Miscellaneous

Preface

General

This tutorial lesson is part of a continuing series of lessons dedicated to object-oriented programming (OOP) with ActionScript.

Several ways to create and launch ActionScript programs

There are several ways to create and launch programs written in the ActionScript programming language. Many of the lessons in this series willuse Adobe Flex as the launch pad for the sample ActionScript programs.

An earlier lesson titled The Default Application Container provided information on how to get started programming with Adobe's Flex Builder 3. (See Baldwin's Flex programming website .) You should study that lesson before embarking on the lessons in this series.

Some understanding of Flex MXML will be required

I also recommend that you study all of the lessons on Baldwin's Flex programming website in parallel with your study of these ActionScript lessons. Eventually you will probably need to understand both ActionScript and Flex andthe relationships that exist between them in order to become a successful ActionScript programmer.

Will emphasize ActionScript code

It is often possible to use either ActionScript code or Flex MXML code to achieve the same result. Insofar as this series of lessons is concerned,the emphasis will be on ActionScript code even in those cases where Flex MXML code maybe a suitable alternative.

Viewing tip

I recommend that you open another copy of this document in a separate browser window and use the following links to easily find and view the figuresand listings while you are reading about them.

Figures

• Figure 1 . Program ActivateEvent01 screen graphics.
• Figure 2 . Debug output in the system console.
• Figure 3 . Project file structure for Effects03.
• Figure 4 . Screen display at startup.
• Figure 5 . Screen display after clicking Start and Pause.
• Figure 6 . Screen display after the effect has run to completion.
• Figure 7 . Comparable MXML code.

Listings

• Listing 1 . Common code for the MXML file.
• Listing 2 . Beginning of Driver class for ActivateEvent01.
• Listing 3 . The event handler methods.
• Listing 4 . Beginning of Driver class for Effects03.
• Listing 5 . Beginning of the constructor for Effects03.
• Listing 6 . Prepare the TextArea object and add it to the Panel.
• Listing 7 . Prepare an embedded image and add it to the Panel.
• Listing 8 . Add the button bar to the panel.
• Listing 9 . Prepare the six buttons for use.
• Listing 10 . Configure the Resize object.
• Listing 11 . Event handlers registered on the Resize object.
• Listing 12 . Common event handler for the buttons.
• Listing 13 . Event handler for the creationComplete event dispatched by the Panel.
• Listing 14 . The common MXML code.
• Listing 15 . Driver class for ActivateEvent01.
• Listing 16 . Driver class for Effects03.