The Programmer's Challenge

So it’s advertised.  Found it very simple to use.

1. Put movie clip on stage (for example, box).

2. Import the classes.  (import com.greensock.*)

3. Tweenlite.to(object_name,duration, {properties:change});

So the box would move from current position to (250,200, with alpha of 1)

with: Tweenlite.to(box,1, {x:250,y:200,alpha:1});

Will have to show a simple use case in the coming days.

Creating a click event using AS3Signals is very convenient.

Within the class, create a public variable called clicked and set it as a NativeSignal();

Let’s say we have a Box.  When you click it, it should report back to the main document class.

Source code

public class Box extends Sprite
	{
 
		public var clicked:NativeSignal;
 
		public function Box()
		{
 
			graphics.beginFill(0x000000,1);
			graphics.drawRect(0,0,100,100);
			graphics.endFill();
 
			clicked = new NativeSignal(this,MouseEvent.CLICK,MouseEvent);
 
		}
        }

From the main class, create an event listener:

Source code

[codesyntax lang="actionscript3"]
 
package
{
	import control.Box;
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.events.MouseEvent;
 
	/**
	 * ...
	 * @author M Skramstad
	 */
 
	public class SignalTest extends Sprite
	{
 
		private var box:Box;
 
		public function SignalTest():void {
		box = new Box();
 
		addChild(box);
		box.clicked.add(boxClicked);
 
		}
 
		private function boxClicked(e:MouseEvent):void
		{
			trace("box clicked");
		}
 
	}
 
}

I first took a look at AS3Signals when it first was being discussed, and I couldn’t get my head around it.  Mostly because I wasn’t that familiar with events at the time to see what it accomplished.  I heard about AS3Signals again through LA Flash, a user-group based around Flash in Los Angeles.

I took another look at AS3Signals and can finally see how it simplifies my code.  I started to modify the existing code and was able to remove the CustomEvent for loading data, remote the Event Dispatcher from the class, and eliminate some unnecessary code.

The following code calls a class called RemoteData which loads a list of feeds from an external database and returns it as a URLVariable when it is loaded.

Source code

private function loadFeeds():void {
	var l:RemoteData = new RemoteData();
	vars = new URLVariables();
	vars.action = "load feeds";
	l.load (vars,DB_LOC);
	l.loaded.add(showFeeds);
}
 
private function showFeeds(ld:URLVariables):void {
        var total:Number = ld.total;
}

In RemoteData, I only had to:

Source code

public var loaded:Signal = new Signal();
 
private function onItemsLoaded(event:Event):void {
	_loadedData = new URLVariables( _loader.data );
	loaded.dispatch(_loadedData);
}

Good tutorial (John Linquist.com) here:

and blog post (TK Assembled) about it here.

I would not be surprised if we see future iterations of ActionScript / Flash Builder incorporating such simplicity.

I’ve been trying to use FlashDevelop for some projects, to see how it compares and differs from Flash Builder 4.  I had to search a while to find some decent dark schemes.

The three I stumbled upon in my search were:

Latch Flog

Int3ractive

Trace Hello

and my own export (for AS3), probably a little too bright for most people.

Trying to shuffle the items in an array, and I was having a heck of a time with a null variable. I was using Math.round(Math.random()*40), which was generating too large an array by 1.

I should have used:

Source code

Math.floor(Math.random()*40);

I also initially tried to copy an array with:

shuffled = itemsArray

but this association is problematic because when the array shuffled changes, so does itemsArray.

A good post about copying arrays in Actionscript 3 is here.  I used:

Source code

shuffled = itemsArray.concat();

This copies the contents of the array and therefore, doesn’t change itemsArray when you shuffle the array shuffled.

I think Republic of Code is a great site for tutorials on programming in Actionscript 3.0.

I was digging into the Loader class for dynamically loading in images. I had previously loaded them into a movie clip, but found this tutorial on using the Bitmap object a great assistance.