Overview
Note that this is a Pre-Festival Workshop Day (Feb 21), and therefore is only available to those who have ‘The Works’ ticket, or the ‘Pre-Festival Workshop’ ticket.
Note on Versions: While this class is updated for Flash CS4, the vast majority of the code and knowledge applies if you are still working in CS3. Most files for the course will open in Flash CS3. You may take the course with either version of the software.
Description: Flash is an event-driven language, and events are the glue that bind together our Flash experiences. Whether you need to work with user mouse interaction, know when an XML file has completed, build a loading animation, know when your application enters/exits full-screen — in short, when you need to use events to do almost anything in Flash — understanding events is key to achieving fluency in ActionScript 3.
And, of course, events in AS3 are completely and fundamentally different from events in AS2.
While events in AS3 might seem intimidating on first glance (especially if you’ve become accustomed to writing your button code in AS2 like btn.onPress = function ()…), fortunately, events in AS3 are incredibly consistent as well as powerful. Once you know how to work with one event, you can work with any event anywhere in the language!
And while events are the glue that bind our Flash together, it is incredibly difficult to find books, lessons or tutorials on these specific issues. Which is why we assembled this course — not only to teach the basics of working with the most common events in AS3, but also investigating the details of events, how they work, why they work that way
It doesn’t matter what your starting point is; When you leave this course, after only one day, you will be a much stronger Flash developer.
Who this course is for:
This course is for users of Flash CS3 or CS4, who feel that they have a basic grasp of the ActionScript 3 language, but want to understand the nature, role and detailed behaviors of events in AS3. This course is also useful for those who feel they have a good grasp of events, but now want to take that skill to the next level by learning how to use and work with custom events and an event broadcaster.
Course Outline
* Introduction
* Event Fundamentals
o What is an Event?
o Basic Event Handling (addEventListener)
o Handling More Types of Events
* Events on the Display List
o Understanding the Three Phases of an Event
o mouseChildren
o ROLL_OVER vs. MOUSE_OVER
o Know Where To Listen
* Intermediate Event Handling
o Priority
o Weak References
o Cancelability
o Default Behaviors
o Dispatching Your Own Events (dispatchEvent())
* Limitations of Native Events
o Data Handling
o Display List Dependence
o Constructor Timing Silence
* Extending Events: Circumventing Native Limitations
o Using Custom Events
o Using an Event Broadcaster
* Conclusion
Computer Policy:
To keep prices this low, this workshop is bring-your-own-laptop.
