This Flash CS4 Book, Flash CS4 Professional Digital Classroom, is like having a personal instructor guiding readers through each lesson, while they work at their own pace. This book includes 13 self-paced lessons that let readers discover essential skills and explore new features and capabilities of Adobe Flash Professional. Every lesson is presented in full color with step-by-step instructions. Learning is reinforced with video tutorials and lesson files on a companion DVD that were developed by the same team of Adobe Certified Instructors and Flash experts who have created many of the official training titles for Adobe Systems. Each video tutorial is approximately five minutes long and demonstrates and explains the concepts and features covered in the lesson. This training package shows the basics of using the program, such as using layers and instances to build animation sequences, as well as advance features, such as using ActionScript to create interactive Web page components. Jam-packed with information, this book and DVD takes users from the basics through intermediate level topics and helps readers find the information they need in a clear, approachable manner.

Get it here.

From the Back Cover

You have a personal tutor in the Digital Classroom

If you want expert instruction that fits into your schedule, the Digital Classroom delivers. Adobe Certified Experts guide you through 15 lessons, helping you learn essential Flash CS4 Professional skills at your own speed. Full-color, step-by-step instructions in the book are enhanced with video tutorials on the DVD. With Digital Classroom, you have your own private instructor showing you the easiest way to learn Flash CS4.

* Create cool vector-based artwork and animation with Flash drawing tools
*

Use the new animation engine to easily create stunning, lightweight animation for online and CD/DVD ROM projects
*

Duplicate, save, and reuse animation sequences
*

Explore all-new tools for building 3D graphics and animation
*

Import graphics from Photoshop® and Illustrator®; add music or video for immersive multimedia creations
*

Control movie playback and create interactive controls with ActionScript®

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Here’s a simple little example of creating actionscript 3 text fields dynamically.  It is also a great example of using functions to do all the dirty work for you.

In order for this to work you need to put a button component in the library.

This sample will create an input text field instance and a button instance.  When the user click on the button, it will create a new text field and set its x,y to random.

Here is the code:

import fl.controls.Button;
import flash.text.TextField;
import flash.text.TextFieldType;

//create a button
var myButton:Button = new Button();
myButton.label = "set text random x,y";
myButton.emphasized = true;
myButton.width = 150;
myButton.move(50, 100);
addChild(myButton);

var tf1:TextField = createTextField(10, 10, 400, 22, true);
tf1.type = TextFieldType.INPUT;

//create an input text field function
function createTextField(x:Number, y:Number, width:Number, height:Number, border:Boolean):TextField {
     var result:TextField = new TextField();
     result.x = x;
     result.y = y;
     result.width = width;
     result.height = height;
     result.background = true;
     result.border = border;
     addChild(result);
     return result;
}

//event that listens for the button to be clicked
myButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,setRandomXY);

//function that creates the new text field and sets the text
function setRandomXY(e:Event){
     var randomX = Math.random()*stage.width;
     var randomY = Math.random()*stage.height;
     var tf2:TextField = createTextField(randomX,randomY,50,20,false)
     tf2.type = TextFieldType.DYNAMIC;
     tf2.text = tf1.text;
}

Related Posts:

• Flash AS3: Random Number Function, Returns a Random Number in Range
• Flash AS3 (actionscript 3) Helps: Flip MovieClip Horizontally with Matrix Class
• Flash Helps: Flashvars in AS3
• Flash Helps: XML and AS3 (actionsript 3) Flash
• Flash AS3 Helps: Catching XML Load Errors, Asynchronously

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When Flash CS3 came out one of the new components was the Tile Component. The Tile Component in AS3 is similar to the Datagrid component in that it uses columns and rows to render data and images. The Tile Component can come in very useful in many instances of design and implementation.

Flash has a few examples of using the Tile Component in the helps. I’ve taken one of those examples and tweaked it a bit below. I put a text field on the stage with an instance name of myText and created a movieClip on the stage as well with the instance name of myMC.

The actionscript for using the Tile Component is as follows.  You’ll notice that it has some of the same properties as the DataGrid…like I mentioned.

import fl.controls.ScrollPolicy;
import fl.controls.TileList;
import fl.data.DataProvider;
import fl.controls.UIScrollBar;
import fl.events.ScrollEvent;
import fl.controls.ScrollBarDirection;

myTileList.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,itemClicked);
function itemClicked(e:Event):void {
//myText
myText.text = myTileList.selectedItem.label;
//myMC
var i =new Loader();
i.load(new URLRequest(myTileList.selectedItem.source));
myMC.addChild(i);
}

Here are the sample files:

tileComponent.swf
tileComponent.fla

Related Posts:

• Flash Helps: Flashvars in AS3
• Flash AS3: Random Number Function, Returns a Random Number in Range
• Flash AS3 (actionscript 3) Helps: Flip MovieClip Horizontally with Matrix Class
• Flash AS3 Helps: Catching XML Load Errors, Asynchronously
• Flash Helps: Create Text Field or Text Fields Dynamically

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Here’s a Flash AS3 (actionscript 3) Papervision 3D sample.  This sample loads data from an XML file that holds the location of the images.  It then puts them on a plane using the Papervision 3D classes and rotates them.

File:
PapervisionImageBlock.fla

Related Posts:

• Flash AS3: Random Number Function, Returns a Random Number in Range
• Flash AS3 (actionscript 3) Helps: Flip MovieClip Horizontally with Matrix Class
• Flash AS3 Helps: Catching XML Load Errors, Asynchronously
• Flash Helps: Create Text Field or Text Fields Dynamically
• Flash Helps: Tile Component

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One thing that we enjoy doing as a family is camping.  We had a Coleman tent-trailer for like 5-6 years and last year we finally decided that we had out grown it.  So we thought that we’d do our part in helping the economy and invest in a new(er) trailer for camping (and despite what Kyality might think…this does not make me a redneck )…OK, the economy wasn’t the real reason…we mostly just wanted to spend more time as a family doing things we loved.

Here are some photos:

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