Specifications

255

CHAPTER 22

ActionScript: Work with

Objects and Classes

Classes are the blueprint for objects in Macromedia Flash Basic 8 and

Macromedia Flash Professional 8. All objects in Flash have an underlying

class; for example, all movie clips have a method called

getURL(), and

getURL() is defined in the class definition for a movie clip. Flash contains

many predefined classes, such as the MovieClip class, the Array class, the

Color class, and the CheckBox class. This tutorial will show you how to

create and modify classes.

You can print this tutorial by downloading a PDF version of it from the

Macromedia Flash Documentation page at www.macromedia.com/go/

fl_documentation.

In this tutorial, you will complete the following tasks:

Set up your workspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Learn about classes and object types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Create an object from a class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .257

Create a custom class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Create two objects from the Product class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

Learn about extending existing classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

Extend the MovieClip class to create a new class . . . . . . . . . . . 264

NOTE

This tutorial is designed for Flash developers who are familiar with basic

Flash and ActionScript concepts.