Thank you very much!

I wrote a stop action from the main time-line. I’m not sure if it is the most elegant solution bit it works.
I could not have figured this out two months ago but thanks to your book and all of the resources you have provided on this site I am slowly seeing how everything goes together in AS 3.0
Cheers

may I suggest this website as a resource? http://tutorials.as3.ca I agree it needs a redesign, but the content is golden! It is a collection of the best actionscript tutorials to be found on the net, organized by subject and difficulty level. So far i have 70, but I keep adding about 10 a week.

Thank you

Martin

Thanks again.

Unfortunately, Adobe introduced radical changes to the Help system that most users dislike, including making it much more difficult to get to the ActionScript Language Reference materials, and adding a Google-like onslaught of community returns for every search.

One way to get to the AS3 Language Reference from within Flash is to highlight the ActionScript you want information about before consulting the Flash Help menu item in the Help menu. Here’s a clean walkthrough to demonstrate:

1. Create a new document.
2. Select the first frame in layer 1 in the timeline.
3. Open the Window > Actions panel.
4. Type: “var mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip();” (without the quotes), which you will soon learn will create an empty movie clip.
5. Highlight MovieClip.
6. Choose “Flash Help” from the Help menu (or equivalent, on Windows. I can’t recall if that menu structure is cross-platform and only have access to a Mac at the moment).

That process (higlighting the AS you’re curious about first) should go right to the AS3 Language Reference. Some AS is common to multiple classes (such as the x property) so you may not always get exactly what you want, but you can search within the Lang Ref at that point. In this case, highlighting MovieClip should get you to the MovieClip class and you’ll be able to scroll down to see the Properties and Hide/Show Public Properties to see what I meant in the text.

One note about your learning process. You might think about other venues for questions, too, instead of this blog when appropriate. Being new to Flash, you may have many questions, and they may not always be appropriate for a blog. That is, you may have questions about Flash (as opposed to AS) or may get a wider/faster response if you join a mailing list (like the Yahoo Group, Flash Tiger) or forum (like Kirupa.com).

This is still a good place to ask about the book specifically, or about AS3 in general. Another resource for Flash interface questions is my companion book, Learning Flash CS4, also published by O’Reilly.

Good luck!

“To simplify things, the x and y properties are typically listed as inherited
properties, as is true in the Flash help system. To view inherited properties,
for example, in the Flash help system, just click the Show Inherited Public
Properties link found immediately under the Public Properties header.”

I spent almost an hour trying to find where is this without any success. I’m using Flash CS4 Professional. I first tried from the main menu, Help > Flash Help but didn’t find anything even remotely similar to a link “Show Inherited Public Properties”. I made a search for “Inherited Public Properties” and “inherited properties”, even searched for the term “Flash help system” but the results were not helpful. I also tried looking hard at the Actions window for some code help system but at no avail.

I feel real uneasy to bother you with such request but will appreciate greatly if you give me additional details.
Thank you.

Second, which code entries you choose to test yourself is, of course, up to you. I would recommend typing everything in yourself to better learn it. However, most of the code in the book can also be found in the downloadable example files for each chapter. Several small passages of code in the book are just explanatory (such as demonstrating syntax) but nearly all large passages can be executed.

To see a trace appear in the Output panel, you just “test” or publish your movie. The native Flash file is a .fla file. However, the runtime version, or .swf file, must be compiled. You can test your movie using Control > Test Movie –or Ctrl-Enter (Win), or Cmd-Return (Mac). That will show the SWF within Flash. At runtime, the AS executes and the trace will appear.

Note, if you publish your movie and view it in a browser, you will not see traces without other fairly significant edits to your system (like a browser plugin, and a system config file, etc.).

I have just started your book, and I’m truly a novice. Please bear with me if my questions are a bit obtuse…

I’m in chapter 2, reading through the various conditionals, loops, etc. Am I supposed to be able to test these examples out on my own computer? I did the document class example in chapter 1, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to make anything happen with the examples in chapter 2– or even if I’m supposed to try them out. In other words, after I copy the actionscript, what steps do I need to do to get to an output panel?

Thanks!