Hey all, I've been searching around forever trying to find a way to make traversing nested display lists more of a 1-line possibility. In AS2 you could grab a clip just by _container.clip1.nestedclip2.nestedclip3 and it was blatently simple. In AS3, is there any way to do that? So far my only methods are keeping a class level reference to important parts of the UI or doing a painful series of getChildByName chains until I drill down to it: (I know the sprite casting is optional up till the last stop, but I hate DisplayObject). var clip1:Sprite = Sprite(_container.getChildByName('clip1')); var nestedclip2:Sprite = Sprite(clip1.getChildByName('nestedclip2')); var nestedclip3:Sprite = Sprite(nestedclip2.getChildByName('nestedclip3')); wtf? I have no idea why I can't daisy chain. var nestedclip3:Sprite = Sprite(_container.getChildByName('clip1').getChildByName('nestedclip2).getChildByName('nestedclip3')); I know gCBN isn't a method without a cast tough and even though it's hideous, this should still work: var nestedclip3:Sprite = Sprite(Sprite(Sprite(Sprite(_container).getChildByName('clip1')).getChildByName('nestedclip2)).getChildByName('nestedclip3'))); The casting makes the getChildByName method possible. What's the deal on this? ... View more

Hey all, I'm dragging a lot of clips around and sometimes I get the pesky issue where the MOUSE_UP event does fire properly and the clip is stuck to the mouse, not having the stopDrag() run because the event failed to fire. In my case I'm dragging a sprite that's restricted to vertical scrolling. This sprite has a mask applied to it. I click on a part of the sprite, it startDrags(), my mouse goes outside the masked area and at that point no MOUSE_UP event will fire. This used to happen in AS2 a ton and you just used onReleaseOutside to make sure that the event fired. Where the heck is this for AS3? That was built specifically so when someone clicks on something inside a flash app, moves their mouse outside the flash app and lets go, flash is still guaranteed to get an event that the mouse went up. What's the equivalent to this in AS3? ... View more

Hi all, I'm trying to get my head around how to communicate through scope. I hope/think this is a pretty basic question but I'm pretty stuck in the AS2 mentality. To make a simple example, say I have 2 classes, ClassA and ClassB. ClassA loads an instance of ClassB: package {   public class ClassA   {      private var _classB:ClassB;      public function ClassA      {          _classB:ClassB = new ClassB();      }   }   class ClassB {}  } Now I want ClassB to communicate with ClassA. It's easy for ClassA to invoke a method on ClassB, _classB.somePublicMethod();, but how does ClassB communicate back up to ClassA? I know one method is making a custom event and adding a listenor in ClassA that binds to ClassB while having ClassB dispatch that custom event. Is there any easier way I'm not aware of? Some kind of parent/super/etc method of talking to the class that instantiated ClassB? edit: Incase it matters or changes the approach someone would recommend, what I'm trying to do is make some touchscreen-esque scrolling functionality. The same stuff built into any smartphone. If you touch the screen and drag the touchscreen in certain contexts knows you want to scroll the information you're looking at. If you just tap something however it knows that you want to interact with what you tapped. That's what I'm trying to figure out how to do in as3. I have a touchscreen and I have navigation that doesn't fit all on the same screen. I'm trying to allow the user to scroll the navigation up/down to see all of the options but also let the user tap a nav item to let them select it. So I'm making a reusable class that's pretty abstract on the concept of allowing me to point to an object and say this object can be clicked, but if the user drags they intend to scroll a display. The actual end use of this is, as a personal learning exercise, I'm trying to duplicate a doodle/paint program my 3yr old son has in flash. He has a touchscreen laptop and he can scroll through a long list of artwork he can touch and it paints it on the screen. I'm trying to mimic that functionality where I try to determine if someone is trying to drag/scroll a list or select something in the list. That said, in that context ClassA is the painting app and ClassB is a reuable class that's applied to a navigation area whose job is to inform ClassA if the user intends to drag or select something. I make my nav items in ClassA and then instantiate ClassB. Because I need to 'wait' until ClassB tells ClassA what the user is doing, it's not a return value type of situation. I have to wait for ClassB to figure out if the person is trying to click or drag, then communicate that back to ClassA so it knows how to handle it. ... View more

Hello all, this is a bit of a strategy question for larger scale flash apps. I've been holding back on AS3 for obviously a very long time and I have some basic questions. I'm very used to building things with hard references in mind using AS2. I build it knowing I'm going to put a panel A in _level0.panela_mc and interface B in _level0.interfaceb_mc and Login Prompt in _level0.login_mc.login_com, etc etc.. I always know these will exist and you simply reference them via _level0.whatever. What is the new strategy to managing references to lots of sprites? If I build a panel in a class method, the var somepanel:Sprite = new Sprite() I create inside the method to hold the panel I'm making will be up for garbage collection if I don't make sure a reference stays intact (via either add it to a display list, add an event handler, etc..). The reference "somepanel" I made in the method will go out of scope at the end of the method as well. Should I expect to have needed to make a class variable ahead of time to store a reference to this? Should I be keeping a class genericObject:Object that holds a list of references to everything I ever make almost like a global registry? I'm just used to AS2. You just create a movieclip and when the method ends, the clip still exists and you know the _level0.ref.ref.ref will always exist and how to get back to it. How are larger projects managed where content loaded isn't known ahead of time and the layout is rather dynamic. What are the strategies used to manage all that dynamic chaos? Lastly I'm so overly used to being able to target a movieclip using a single daisy chained list of clips, like: _level0.this_mc.that_mc.those_mc. I noticed I can't seem to do this approach with the getChild() approach. using someSprite.getChildByName('this').getChildByName('that').getChildByName('those') doesn't work. How do you drill down into nested clips? I did notice I can do it one level at a time, such as: refA = someSprite.getChildByName('this'); refB = refA.getChildByName('that'); refC = refB.getChildByName('those'); .. Is that what I'm expected to do? Thanks for some tips! ... View more

IQ, experience, skill level, yada all pertain to it but uhm, in general how hard is the leap from AS2->AS3? ... View more

Been getting into some complex projects lately and I really hate to use the flash timeline at all. I like to live in code but I am still stuck in AS2 (having CS3 pro since it came out) because mProjector and MDM Zinc only supported it. (Yes, just yesterday Zinc 3 came out with full AS3 support, but I need to learn it).. Sooo I'm finding that I can get away with running up to about 4-5 thousand lines of code before flash player starts to noticably have trouble completing a frame in time (31fps). Albeit it obviously matters what the code is actually doing but I'm wondering how many lines do you all run before you find it starts to fall behind on framerate? What is reasonable? ... View more

Hi all, Curious if we have any seasoned keyboard lovers here that suffer this same issue, or better, have solved it! I believe the issue to be flash though, and a glitch that needs patching, as it happens on multiple systems for me. In Windows, in every text entry known to mankind, if your cursor is at the beginning of a line and you hold shift and press the down arrow, it selects that whole line. It's a way of selecting all whitespace at the beginning and end as well as the CRLF. It's very useful in duplicating whole lines of text because it copies CRLF (carriage return line feed). Just using your mouse to select a line of text does not usually copy CRLF, and thus you can't paste it. Nor does shift-end or shift-right arrowing to select text. It's just shift + down arrow that also copies CRLF. If you dont copy CRLF, then you need to press enter after every line you paste. So my problem? Flash does not have this behaviour (in windows F8 Pro or CS3 Pro). Flash additionally selects whitespace on the following line (next line down). So you get the whole current line, AND the spaces and tabs on the next line. This is a glitch. No other program does this. This is completely non-standard. Why does this matter? Because code is indented. This means every time I try to copy some lines of code to re-arrange some lines (thousands of times a month), it also selects the indentation of the code on the line below my selection. So when I cut the code (CTRL+X), it cuts the indentation of that line and I continually need to fix it. By fixing it, I mean I need to correct the extra whitespace selection before I even cut the code. I gotta hold shift and slap the left arrow key to reduce my selection of the whitespace before I cut. This one stupid quirk of flash has been annoying me for months.. So I really need to know.. Does this happen to everyone else also? Does everyone else use the mouse to copy code? Am I alone here? Or is this just happening to me? Quick way to test it is just to open any text editor you have. Any at all. Notepad, C# studio, wordpad, dreamweaver, who cares, a web form, yada... Anything! Hell, do it in the quick reply field on this page!! And then put your cursor at the beginning of any line, hold shift and press your down arrow. Notice it select the line, but nothing more. Now do it in flash. Notice it wraps the selection to the next line. Why the hell did this get past beta testing for over a year straight? ... View more