Timeline, MovieClip and AS 3 101

1. A MovieClip subclass instance starts playing as soon as it’s been instantiated:


var myMC:MyMC = new MyMC();

AddChild(myMC); or removeChild(myMC) doesn’t affect the playhead in myMC, meaning if there is no framescript, myMC will continue playing regardless of whether it’s been added to the playlist or not.

2. To use the versatile/artistic/rétrospectif/timeline-script style, one thing to keep in mind is if any children MovieClip symbols are physically placed inside the timeline of your MovieClip subclass, you can either have Flash make those variable declarations automatically (and thus you should not declaring them as variables in your timeline script), or associate your movieClip symbol with an external class file definition and remove those variable declaration in the class. (in such a case, you will still have Flash declare those children instances variables for you but you will have to make them public in your class.)

Link: Flash CS3: Automatic Timeline Declarations

3. To use an external class definition for a MovieClip symbol and associate timeline script with it, use addFrameScript(frameObj1, frameHandler1, frameObj2, frameHandler2, *rest);. Note that frameObject is zero based: meaning if you want to use frame number, frame one would need a value of 0.

4. To determine if a displayObject is on the playlist or not, check to see if either of the following revolves to true or false:

displayObject.stage

displayObjectParentsOrAncestor.contains(displayObject)

5. Since the timeline script is synchronized by “Event.ENTER_FRAME“, it might be it’s delayed because of other script took longer to execute. As an animator, I found myself, especially in my earlier days of using Flash, put a stop() on some frame (say that frame is labeled “paused”) of a MC symbol and in my client code, I need to gotoAndPlay("paused") to resume from that specific point. It would sometimes get confusing since gotoAndPlay("paused") won’t always resume the playhead, instead it seems to freeze at that certain frame; that is because the frame script stop() is executed AFTER gotoAndPlay("paused") is executed . A quick-n-dirty workaround is to simply do the following:

gotoAndStop("paused");
gotoAndPlay(currentFrame+1);

or

gotoAndPlay(pausedFrameNumber+1);

6. Render Event

7. Flash 9: Timeline navigation and code execution

useHandCursor, buttonMode and mouseChildren

To display the hand cursor for a displayObject with a dynamic textfield inside it (Suppose the textfield is on top of a shape):

mySprite.buttonMode = true;
//By default useHandCursor is true;
//mySprite.useHandCursor = true;
mySprite.mouseChildren = false;

Assign additional class to a div using Prototype 1.5/6

Senario:

You need to do something like this (only one div gets assigned class “hilit” at a time):

<div class = “thumbDivOther hilit” id=”thumb_intro” onclick=”showItem(’intro’, this);”>

Code:

currHilitDiv.removeClassName(’hilit’);
//This doesn’t work in IE6
//div.addClassName(’hilit’);
Element.addClassName(div, ‘hilit’);
currHilitDiv = div;

Instantiate one Flash object at once in a page

Senario:

I need to instantiate only one Flash object at once in a page, for instance under a row of tabs when the user clicks on one of them. Sometimes I toggle between different Flash objects; sometimes just another DOM div takes place of the Flash object. It’s very straightforward in Firefox since all you need to do is to toggle the “display” property (set it to the value of “none”). With Prototype library, you can use Element.hide()/show(). In IE, situations get a little complicated since if that Flash is playing a video clip, the stream continues (you still hear sound, etc.) regardless of its containing div’s “display”/”visibility” property values.

Solutions:

For the former situation, simply write a new swf object to the same div:

function loadSWF(fileName)
{
swfURL = appURL+’swf/’+fileName+’.swf’;
var so = new SWFObject(swfURL, “soObj”, “500″, “360″, “8″, “#eeeeee”);
so.addParam(”allowscriptaccess”,”always”);
so.addParam(”swliveconnect”, “true”);
so.useExpressInstall(”http://myhostname.com/js/swfobject/expressinstall.swf”);
so.write(”vidHolder”);
}

For the latter situation, destroy the swf object by doing the following when toggling to another div which doesn’t contain any swf object. This will stop the audio/video streams:

$(’vidHolder’).innerHTML = “”;