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Tag: as3

Ipoint interface | ActionScript 3.0 AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 4th, 2014

It amazes me that ActionScript (AS3) does not have interfaces listed for all its classes. Often you want to create a class that inherits from something like MovieClip and MovieClip inherits all the way down a long list of classes. So you are left with ...

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Cubic bezier using beziersegment | ActionScript 3 AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 27th, 2012

Fast Cubic Bezier in AS3 Because we use the machine code to do the calculations instead of doing them our self in interpreted AS3 this runs very fast. When you look up Cubic Bezier on the web you find a ton of math and a bunch of libraries for Act...

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Truncating a number | Setting the precision of a float | ActionScript 3. AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 27th, 2012

Truncating a Number or Floating Point in ActionScript 3.0 The Efficient Way I have seen a few solutions for truncating a Number. Many of these solutions used to truncate a float or Number in ActionScript 3.0 (AS3) are just plain over complicated and ...

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Scale error | Precision problems width, height, getbounds | ActionScript 3.0 AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 24th, 2012

##Precision Pitfalls Between getRect and Width/Height## Keep in mind when you are using var boundingBox:Rectangle = mc.getRect(coordSystem) or var boundingBox:Rectangle = mc.getBounds(coordSystem) the Rectangle returned will be of a greater precisi...

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Trace works but breakpoints are broken in flex debugger | ActionScript 3.0

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 24th, 2012

I ran into a problem with the Flex Debugger not stopping on breakpoints. Here are somethings that could be wrong: 1.) The debugger and flex may not be connecting to fix this see here: [http://therush.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/resolved-flex-builder-3-d...

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Remove redundant items from an array | ActionScript 3.0 AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 24th, 2012

The following code is an example of how to remove redundant elements from an Array.

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Mixing colors | Add 10 percent of one color to another | ActionScript 3.0 AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 24th, 2012

If you want to add one color to another and then set a movie clip to that tint I have provided the function below. The idea is to sort of mix colors in the way paint is mixed here is how you do it: Check out the RGB class here: [convert...

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Scrollbar in ActionScript 3.0 AS3 | Light weight and simple without flex

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 24th, 2012

I was annoyed that I have to rely on bloated Flex components to do simple stuff. I ported the kirupa AS2 scrollbar to AS3 and then added a few touches to make it a little more versatile. It is really just a starting point. For example, if you are using...

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How to recursively traverse an XML object in AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 24th, 2012

I found lots of examples on how to recusively parse through an XML object using E4X in ActionScript 3 (AS3). None of these examples were very simple or to the point. Most relied on the specifics of the XML instead of making general code that could acce...

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uint to 6 digit RGB hex | tostring(16) | ActionScript 3.0 AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 24th, 2012

What if you want to get that 6 digit color value that is so commonly used in CSS/HTML, design programs, etc from the native way ActionScript 3.0 (AS3) stores an octal (0x00000F is stored as uint 15). I am talking about the number that has the pound or ...

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How to get today's date in ActionScript 3 (AS3)

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 2nd, 2012

The Date() constructor takes up to seven parameters (year, month, ..., millisecond) to specify a date and time to the millisecond. The date that the newly constructed Date object contains depends on the number, and data type, of arguments passed. If...

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AS3 design pattern | Organize packages for a multi SWF project

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 2nd, 2012

Design Pattern - How to organize packages for decoupling externally loaded SWFs.Here is a design pattern that will show you how the hierarchy should work when building a complicated program that loads in multiple external SWFs. There is a root to the p...

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Decouple Externally Loaded SWFs in AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 2nd, 2012

How to decouple externally loaded movieClips from their loader in Actionscript 3 (AS3) Here is a common problem: TypeError: Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert com.yourUrl.mainClass.SomeClass@48cb821 to com.yourUrl.mainClass.SomeClass at ...

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How to Parse (File, Package, Function Name) from a Stack Trace in ActionScript (AS3)

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 2nd, 2012

So stack traces can look different depending on the flash player in which it is running. For example in the Flash IDE standalone player a constructor will look like this ConstructorFunctionName$iinit() but in the player running in a web page it will ju...

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Example of get | Read only accessor | ActionScript 3 AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 5th, 2012

##"get" example in AS3## Please post any other examples you may have in the comments. public function get toolTip():String{ return _toolTip; } Get is used to create read only properties on a class. It is used in combination ...

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Fl.controls not found, how do I import the fl package in ActionScript 3 AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 5th, 2012

Flash components are fantastic as long as you don't start customizing them. I never used them in AS2 because they would often access the root of my movie and add things that messed with my code. Now with ActionScript3 (AS3) Security settings, I can loa...

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How to exit a function in the middle and continue on with the code

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 5th, 2012

I saw a lot of searches for this so I decided to write an article about it. So you can jump out of a function at anytime using the "return;" command. Here is an example function test(isContinue):void{ var i:String = "bal bla ablababallaa...

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How to use variables in your XML declarations

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 5th, 2012

How to use variables for parts of your XML instead of static XML declarations. You can easily create XML through string manipulation like the following: var myXML = new XML("this is the link"); but this is slow and requires that the XML be...

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Tree menu with ActionScript AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 5th, 2012

##An Example of How to Customize a Tree Component## I came across some open source code developed by Yahoo! called the Yahoo Atra components. VERY HARD TO CUSTOMIZE! I found the documentation to be particularly inadequate for the degree that I wanted t...

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Code for a resizable window in AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 5th, 2012

Flex handles window resizing really well so there is little need anymore to program your own custom window code. But for those of you who want a manually resizable window without loading some massive amount of flex code just to get resizable window cod...

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How To Use The ...Rest Operator With Recursion in ActionScript | AS 3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 2nd, 2012

How to pass an undefined number of parameters or multiple parameters into a function recursively.The rest operator means that multiple parameters or an undefined number of parameters can be passed into a function. The rest operator is denoted by three ...

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Porting _global in ActionScript from AS2 to AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 2nd, 2011

Global variables The _global variable has been removed in ActionScript 3.0, it is suggested that you use specific objects that are created in the global scope to store your data instead of globing unrelated bits and pieces under one global object. Howe...

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Style guide & best practices for ActionScript 3 (AS3)

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 24th, 2011

Adobe Flash Best Practices and ActionScript 3 Style Guide. “Code that only you can understand does not make you an advanced coder." - Some Smart Guy Goals When you look at a variable, class or function name, the way that the code is written should ...

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