Comments on: Welcome

By: Rich

Rich — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:07:51 +0000

@john, @Paulo, @NA, @Mike: Thanks for the words of encouragement!

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:26:40 +0000

Finished reading your book, just thought I would stop by to tell you how much I enjoyed it. This book is indispensable to those learning actionscript 3.0 even if it is your first programming language. Thanks!

By: NA

NA — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 17:46:19 +0000

Wow! Thought I was losing the plot but now it’s all coming together in Chapter 6. Good book - thanks!

By: Paulo

Paulo — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:25:40 +0000

Thanks for the great book.
I bought yesterday and I am very happy.

Thank you very much!

By: john andeson

john andeson — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:10:03 +0000

I got it to work by placing this into the code -import fl.video.FLVPlayback;

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

By: john andeson

john andeson — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:14:37 +0000

Hi,
I have used your book to help me in building a new and improved website which I plan to launch soon.
I am currently having a problem that I hope someone can help me with.
I have a flash player component which I am using to load different animations into. Twelve in all.
I have a main menu and a “back to menu button” which also stops the flvPlayer. This works perfectly.
However, in addition, I would like stop the flvPlayer from the home button, which sends the user to the main page and is outside of the players timeline.
Using the book as a reference, it seemed I could use and addListener(Event.EXIT_FRAME, stopPlaying);
but that just stops anything from playing.
Any suggestions would be great.

By: Martin Legris

Martin Legris — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:07:28 +0000

Hi,

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

By: Ross

Ross — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:26:11 +0000

Thanks Rich, great advice and tips.
on Windows Vista I managed to access the relevant Language Reference by right clicking on the highlighted code and choosing Help.

Thanks again.

By: Rich

Rich — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:59:05 +0000

@Ross, ask away! 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:

Create a new document.
Select the first frame in layer 1 in the timeline.
Open the Window > Actions panel.
Type: "var mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip();" (without the quotes), which you will soon learn will create an empty movie clip.
Highlight MovieClip.
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!

By: Ross

Ross — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:25:22 +0000

Hi, this is my day 2 with your book and I find it very useful. Thank you for the great book. I’m a total beginner with Action Script and programing in general and I’m also new to Flash. So far I managed to follow everything but at the moment I’m unexpectedly stuck at something that really makes me feel very dumb asking for help about it. I’m at the Inherited Attributes introduction trying to follow these instructions:

“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.