User Guide
Table Of Contents
- Contents
- Working with Flash MX 2004
- Creating Basic Components in Flash MX 2004
- Creating Advanced Components in Flash MX 2004
- Contents
- About Creating components
- Writing the component’s ActionScript code
- Simple example of a class file
- General process for writing a class file
- Selecting a parent class
- Identifying the class, symbol, and owner names
- About the component instantiation life cycle
- Writing the constructor
- Specifying clip parameters
- Implementing the constructObject2() method
- Implementing the init() method
- Implementing the createChildren() method
- Implementing the commitProperties() method
- Implementing the measure() method
- Implementing the layoutChildren() method
- Implementing the draw() method
- Defining getters and setters
- Component metadata
- Defining component parameters
- Handling events
- Using the Event metadata
- About invalidation
- Skinning custom controls
- Adding styles
- Making components accessible
- Improving component usability
- Best practices when designing a component
- Using the ModalText example
- Troubleshooting
- Index
3
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: Working with Flash MX 2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
About creating components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Working in the Flash environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Working with component symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Exporting components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
CHAPTER 2: Creating Basic Components in Flash MX 2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Creating simple components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Working with component properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Binding properties to a custom component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Adding events to custom components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Setting default sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Styling custom components. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Skinning custom components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Creating compound components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
CHAPTER 3: Creating Advanced Components in Flash MX 2004 . . . . . . . . . . . 45
About Creating components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Writing the component’s ActionScript code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Skinning custom controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Adding styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Making components accessible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Improving component usability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Best practices when designing a component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Using the ModalText example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79