Tag: ActionScript

Adding ActionScript to Multiple Instances

Author BradPosted on Categories ActionScript, Flash, TutorialsTags , , , ,

I wrote a small snippet of ActionScript 2.0 the other day that I was quite proud of. It actually isn’t a very complicated block of code, but I was having trouble making a movieclip do what I wanted so I was quite pleased when I finally got it to work.

Here was my problem:

I had a movieclip, twenty-four frames long, with twenty-three buttons inside. When the mouse moved over each button, the movieclip was supposed to go to a different frame. I didn’t want to code each button individually because that can be tedious, so I employed a method I have often used to add the same code to multiple buttons. First I gave the timeline a name by assigning it to a variable:


var menus:MovieClip = this;
 

My buttons inside the movieclip were named btn1 through btn23, so I then created a for statement like so:


for (var i=1; i< =23; i++) {
    t = menus[“btn”+i];
    t.onRollOver = function() {
        gotoAndStop(i+1);
    }
    t.onRollOut = function() {
        gotoAndStop(1);
    }
}
 

Using the temporary variables t and i, I was able to assign onRollOver and onRollOut functions to each button. The code actually worked really well when the mouse rolled off the buttons, but when the mouse rolled over the buttons, the movieclip always went to Frame 24 (23 + 1), no matter which button it was over. Obviously, this wasn’t going to work.

I tried several things to make the code work, and had no luck. For some reason, whenever I used the i variable in referencing the frame to go to, it only registered as being equal to 23. I had to figure out a way to capture the value of i at each iteration. Then it occured to me. Since i wasn’t working, maybe I could reference the object directly, using the instance name to tell the movieclip which frame to go to. That was easy enough to do using this._name, but I still had the problem of getting rid of the btn part of the instance names. That was when I remembered substring. I rewrote my code to convert the substring of each instance name to an integer, added 1, and it worked perfectly. My code now looked like this:


var menus:MovieClip = this;

for (var i=1; i < =23; i++) {
    t = menus[“btn”+i];
    t.onRollOver = function() {
        gotoAndStop(int(substring(this._name, 4, this._name.length)) + 1);
    }
    t.onRollOut = function() {
        gotoAndStop(1);
    }
}
 

Variables and Data Types in ActionScript

Author BradPosted on Categories ActionScript, TutorialsTags , , ,

Continued from Understanding Variables:

Like most programming languages, ActionScript variables follow a set of rules when it comes to naming. ActionScript variable names can have letters, numbers, dollar signs, and underscores, but they cannot start with a number. ActionScript variables are also case-sensitive.

ActionScript variables are a little unusual in that any variable can store any type of data. When a piece of data is assigned to a variable, the interpreter automatically changes the variable type to whatever type the data is. In programming languages like Java and C++, data of the wrong type is converted to the variable’s data type instead of the other way around, or an error is caused in the program.

Alternatively, ActionScript variable types can be set when the variable is declared.

ActionScript 2.0 has several built-in data types:

  • Boolean – a data type with only two possible values: true or false
  • MovieClip – a special data type used for controlling movie clip instances
  • null – a special data value representing an absence of data; default value for variables declared without a value
  • Number – any series of numeric values, including integers, unsigned integers, and floating point numbers; mainly used for counting and mathematical equations
  • Object – built-in or user-defined classes of data; a collection of properties or attributes
  • String – a series of alphanumeric characters, numbers, and punctuation marks
  • undefined – same as the null data type; default value for instances of the Object class
  • Void – special data type used to designate functions that don’t return a value

ActionScript 3.0 also adds two more data types:

  • int – a 32-bit integer between -231 and 231-1
  • uint – a 32-bit unsigned integer (either positive or zero) between 0 and 232-1

Continued in:

Understanding Variables

Author BradPosted on Categories ActionScript, JavaScript, PHP, TutorialsTags , , , , ,

While not technically tutorials, I have decided to post a series of articles about variables for Web programming newbies. Variables are an essential element for anyone wishing to do Web programming. They are also an integral part of many technologies, including JavaScript, ActionScript, and PHP.

To begin with, what is a variable? A technical definition would be somewhere along the lines of : A pointer to a location in memory where a temporary value can be stored for use in a program. To the common person that may not make much sense, so I prefer a different definition: A container which holds a value that can be changed. Simply put, a variable is a key word that represents a temporary value. If it helps, you can think of variables as having a variable value. Generally, this value can be changed through instructions given by a program, but some variables are unchangeable depending on the scripting language in use. Many languages have built-in variables which keep a constant value.

Most scripting languages also have some sort of method for deciding the pattern of variable names. In general, variable names may contain letters, numbers, underscores, and dollar signs, but they cannot start with a number. They also cannot contain spaces. While variable names can generally be of any length, if they are too long they become unmanageable.

Many languages are case-sensitive, so it is also a good idea to pay attention to whether your variable names include capital or lowercase letters. In languages where variable names are not case-sensitive, a program may confuse one variable with another if care is not taken during naming. A variable named my_var will look exactly the same as a different variable named My_Var. As a rule of thumb, I never create variables using capital letters. That way, regardless of the language I’m using I will never have conflicting variable names.

In the continuation of my Variables series, I plan on looking at the use of variables in a couple of different coding languages; specifically ActionScript, JavaScript, and PHP. Stay tuned for more.

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