User Guide

1100 Appendix: Deprecated Language Elements
tellTarget
Availability
Flash Player 3. This function was deprecated in Flash 5; Macromedia recommends that you use
dot (.) notation and the
with statement.
Usage
tellTarget("target") {
statement(s);
}
Parameters
target
A string that specifies the target path of the Timeline to be controlled.
statement(s) The instructions to execute if the condition is true.
Returns
Nothing.
Description
Action; applies the instructions specified in the statements parameter to the Timeline specified
in the
target parameter. The tellTarget action is useful for navigation controls. Assign
tellTarget to buttons that stop or start movie clips elsewhere on the Stage. You can also make
movie clips go to a particular frame in that clip. For example, you might assign
tellTarget to
buttons that stop or start movie clips on the Stage or prompt movie clips to jump to a
particular frame.
In Flash 5 or later, you can use dot (.) notation instead of the
tellTarget action. You can use the
with action to issue multiple actions to the same Timeline. You can use the with action to target
any object, whereas the
tellTarget action can target only movie clips.
Example
This tellTarget statement controls the movie clip instance ball on the main Timeline. Frame 1
of the
ball instance is blank and has a stop() action so it isn’t visible on the Stage. When you
click the button with the following action,
tellTarget tells the playhead in ball to go to
Frame 2, where the animation starts:
on(release) {
tellTarget("_parent.ball") {
gotoAndPlay(2);
}
}
The following example uses dot (.) notation to achieve the same results:
on(release) {
_parent.ball.gotoAndPlay(2);
}