User Guide

Understanding the display architecture 163
■ Sprite—A Sprite object can contain graphics of its own, and it can contain child display
objects. (The Sprite class extends the DisplayObjectContainer class). For more
information, see “Working with display object containers” on page 168 and “Drawing
vector graphics” on page 176.
■ MovieClip—A MovieClip object is similar to a Sprite object, except that it also has a
timeline. For more information, see “Controlling ActionScript 3.0 movie clips”
on page 183.
The following classes, which are not in the flash.display package, are subclasses of the
DisplayObject class:
■ The TextField class, included in the flash.text package—TextField objects are display
objects for text display and input. For more information, see “Working with text”
on page 178.
■ The Video class, included in the flash.media package—see “Working with video”
on page 186.
You cannot instantiate instances of the following classes in the flash.display package, but they
do extend the DisplayObject class:
■ AVM1Movie—The AVM1Movie class is used to represent loaded SWF files that are
authored in ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0.
■ DisplayObjectContainer—The Loader, Stage, Sprite, and MovieClip classes each extend
the DisplayObjectContainer class. For more information, see “Working with display
object containers” on page 168.
■ InteractiveObject—InteractiveObject is the base class for all objects used to interact with
the mouse and keyboard. SimpleButton, TextField, Video, Loader, Sprite, Stage, and
MovieClip objects are all subclasses of the InteractiveObject class.
■ MorphShape—These objects are created when you apply a shape tween. You cannot
instantiate them using ActionScript. Morph shapes are created only in the Flash authoring
tool.
■ Stage—The Stage class extends the DisplayObjectContainer class. There is one Stage
instance for an application, and it is at the top of the display list hierarchy. For more
information, see “Setting Stage properties” on page 173.
Also, the StaticText class, in the flash.text package, extends the DisplayObject class, but you
cannot instantiate an instance of it. Static text fields are created only in the Flash authoring
tool.