User Guide

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CHAPTER 6

Creating Components

This chapter describes how to create your own component and package it for distribution.

This chapter contains the following sections:

Component source files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Overview of component structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

Building your first component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Selecting a parent class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Creating a component movie clip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Creating the ActionScript class file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Incorporating existing components within your component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Exporting and distributing a component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

Final steps in component development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

Component source files

The components available in the Components panel are precompiled SWC clips. The source

Flash Document (FLA) containing the graphics and the source ActionScript class files (AS)

containing the code for these components have also been provided for you to use in creating

your own custom components. The source files for the version 2 components are installed

with Macromedia Flash. It is helpful to open and review a few of these files, and try to

understand their structure before you build your own components. The RadioButton

component is a good example of a simpler component that you may want to explore first. All

the components are symbols in the library of StandardComponents.fla. Each symbol is linked

to an ActionScript class. Their location is as follows:

■ FLA file source code

■ In Windows: C:\Program Files\Macromedia\

Flash 8\language\Configuration\ComponentFLA\StandardComponents.fla.

■ On the Macintosh: HD/Applications/Macromedia Flash 8/Configuration/

ComponentFLA/StandardComponents.fla