User Guide

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CHAPTER 39
Screen class (Flash
Professional only)
The Screen class is the base class for screens that you create in the Screen Outline pane in
Flash Professional 8. Screens are high-level containers for creating applications and
presentations. For an overview of working with screens, see Chapter 14, “Working with
Screens (Flash Professional Only),” in Using Flash.
The Screen class has two primary subclasses: Slide and Form.
The Slide class provides the runtime behavior for slide presentations. The Slide class provides
built-in navigation and sequencing capabilities, and lets you easily attach transitions between
slides using behaviors. Slide objects maintain “state,” and allow the user to advance to the next
or previous slide/state: when the next slide is shown, the previous slide is hidden. For more
information about using the Slide class to control slide presentations, see “Slide class (Flash
Professional only)” on page 1135.
The Form class provides the runtime environment for form applications. Forms can overlay
and contain, or be contained by, other components. Unlike slides, forms don’t provide any
sequencing or navigation capabilities. For more information, see “Form class (Flash
Professional only)” on page 735.
The Screen class provides functionality common to both slides and forms.
Screens know how to manage their children Every screen includes a built-in property
that contains a list of that screen’s child screens, known as a collection. This collection is
determined by the screen hierarchy in the Screen Outline pane. Screens can have any number
of children (or none), which themselves can have children.
Screens can hide and show their children Because a screen is, essentially, a collection of
nested movie clips, a screen can control the visibility of its children. For form applications, all
of a screen’s children are visible by default at the same time; for slide presentations, individual
screens are typically shown one at a time.
Screens broadcast events You can, for example, trigger a sound to play, or start playing
some video, when a particular screen becomes visible.