Classes and inheritance in ActionScript 3.0

Posted on September 5, 2007 by Nuno Correia

These Adobe documents are a good introduction to Classes and Sub-Classes:

Strategies for designing a class
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/main/00000032.html

Inheritance
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/main/00000068.html

Posted in Flash | Tagged | Leave a comment

Adobe – Flash Development Center – Quick Starts

Posted on September 5, 2007 by Nuno Correia

Adobe’s Flash Development Center has a very useful Quick Starts section with short tutorials on different key features of ActionScript 3.0. I’ve provided direct links to the ones I find more useful:

Embedding fonts
Event handling
Display list programming
Creating a simple ActionScript 3.0 class
Working with symbols and the Document class
Animating with ActionScript in Flash
Programming with arrays
Making accessible user interfaces

Posted in Flash | Tagged | Leave a comment

What’s new in ActionScript 3.0

Posted on September 4, 2007 by Nuno Correia

“Although ActionScript 3.0 contains many classes and features that will be familiar to ActionScript programmers, ActionScript 3.0 is architecturally and conceptually different from previous versions of ActionScript. The enhancements in ActionScript 3.0 include new features of the core language and an improved Flash Player API that provides increased control of low-level objects.” (Adobe)

Core language features:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/main/00000009.html

Flash Player API features:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/main/00000010.html

Posted in Flash | Leave a comment

O’Reilly ActionScript 3.0 books

Posted on September 4, 2007 by Nuno Correia

O’Reilly continues to publish very good ActionScript books.

Here is the link to their Flash and ActionScript section:

http://www.oreilly.com/pub/topic/flash

Besides the excellent Essencial ActionScript 3.0 book already discussed here, there are 2 more books I reccomend:

ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns (advanced level)

ActionScript 3.0 Cook Book (more Flex-oriented)

Posted in Flash | Tagged | Leave a comment

How to get Kuler into Flash CS3

Posted on September 4, 2007 by Nuno Correia

Adobe posted a tutorial on how to get the cool Kuler tool into Flash:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/kuler_panel.html

Posted in Flash | Tagged | Leave a comment

Adobe Video – Adding interactivity with buttons in ActionScript 3.0

Posted on September 3, 2007 by Nuno Correia

Something very basic changed a but in ActionScript 3.0 – adding interactivity to buttons. This is a nice, short Adobe Video that shows how it’s done now:

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/?id=vid0130

(duplicate link from a previous post, recontextualized here)

This other video showcases the same type of interactivity, but using Script Assist (which slows down the programming process, in my opinion). Still, it’s useful for showing how the Class structure is now organized:

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/?id=vid0131

Posted in Flash | Tagged | Leave a comment

Adobe Video – Copying animation as ActionScript 3.0

Posted on September 3, 2007 by Nuno Correia

Another of the novelties of Flash CS3 is the capability of copying one animation to another object. That can also be done in ActionScript, as this video exemplifies:

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/?id=vid0126

By the way, Flash uses E4X to handle animation data in ActionScript.

Posted in Flash | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Using ActionScript 3.0 Components

Posted on September 2, 2007 by Nuno Correia

This Adobe PDF is very useful for programming ActionScript 3.0 components:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/main/flash_as3_components_help.pdf

This is a very practical introductory HTML tutorial:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/quickstart/getting_started_ui_components/

Note the links in the end of the article:

Using the Button component
Using the Label component
Getting started with Flash CS3 user interface components
Creating, populating, and resizing the DataGrid component
Customizing and sorting the DataGrid component
Filtering and formatting data in the DataGrid component
Displaying images with the TileList component

There is also a series of interesting Adobe video tutorial about components:

Using components:
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/?id=vid0133
Writing ActionScript for components:
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/?id=vid0134
Creating a simple application with components:
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/?id=vid0135

I find that there are less books or online resources about Flash components than other aspects of Flash.

Posted in Flash | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Adobe PDF – Programming ActionScript 3.0

Posted on September 2, 2007 by Nuno Correia

This Adobe PDF is extremely useful for programming in ActionScript 3.0:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/main/flash_as3_programming.pdf

Posted in Flash | Tagged | Leave a comment

gotoAndLearn – Flash Video Tutorials

Posted on September 2, 2007 by Nuno Correia

I found this interesting site with Flash video tutorials:

http://www.gotoandlearn.com/

Posted in Flash | Tagged | Leave a comment