User Guide

8Introduction
Intended audience
This book is for developers who are building Flash applications and want to use components
to speed development. You should already be familiar with developing applications in Flash
and writing ActionScript.
If you are less experienced with writing ActionScript, you can add components to a
document, set their parameters in the Property inspector or Component inspector, and use
the Behaviors panel to handle their events. For example, you could attach a Go To Web Page
behavior to a Button component that opens a URL in a web browser when the button is
clicked without writing any ActionScript code.
If you are a programmer who wants to create more robust applications, you can create
components dynamically, use ActionScript to set properties and call methods at runtime, and
use the listener event model to handle events.
For more information, see Chapter 3, “Working with Components,” on page 49.
System requirements
Macromedia components do not have any system requirements in addition to Flash.
Any SWF file that uses version 2 components must be viewed with Flash Player 6 (6.0.79.0)
or later, and must be published for ActionScript 2.0 (you can set this through File > Publish
Settings, in the Flash tab).
About the documentation
This document explains the details of using components to develop Flash applications. It
assumes that you have general knowledge of Macromedia Flash and ActionScript. Specific
documentation about Flash and related products is available separately.
This document is available as a PDF file and as online help. To view the online help, start
Flash and select Help > Using Components.
For information about Macromedia Flash, see the following documents:
Using Flash
Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Flash
ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference
Components Language Reference