ed dickins

I am starting to go deeper into the Actionscript 2.0 framework that is released with Flash mx 2004 pro. There is a lot that is new to learn.

This is the first proper Object Oriented language I have programmed in. All other versions of Actionscript using prototypes instead of proper classes. And I wimped out of learning .net although now I understand Actionscript 2.0 and classes I would probably not have too many problems.

I finally understand what one of my bosses meant all that time ago when he was trying to get me to write classes in flash. Of course no such thing was possible in Actionscript 1.0 and I did the closest thing I could using prototypes and basing the development on the Model View Controller design pattern as best I could.

But I didn’t really understand what he was getting at until now. It is really powerful stuff and I find that having a new way to program has made my code cleaner and it is making me be more organised before I start doing anything. I welcome this for lots of reasons.

I do have some complaints about Macromedia’s support for this new framework. I can barely find anything about what you need to do to get the most out of Actionscript 2.0, so thankfully I have found a few excellent resources online. But this doesn’t excuse Macromedia’s poor support.

I find reading the daft ‘help’ panel very frustrating. But the component dictionary is pretty good, and you can read up on all the classes if you want to extend one or find out what methods and events it supports.

I have found two books that are proving to be helpful.

Actionscript 2.0 Dictionary from the Macromedia Press.
Object-Oriented Programming with Actionscript 2.0 published by New Riders.

I feel really badly for the authors Jeff Tapper, James Talbot and Robin Haffner. The book is brilliant and they have done well to get it out so quickly, but it would appear that one of their technical editors/ proof readers bollocksed up the code examples and there are some mistakes in the examples.

But if you can understand what the body of the text is saying, you should spot these typos straight away as they are obvious. And even with these mistakes, the book is very well written and I would still recommend it to anyone who wants to progress from Actionscript 1.0 to Actionscript 2.0 and implement OOP for maybe the first time.

So, if you are interested I have added some good flash links to the links section. These others are all Actionscript 2.0 specific ones, many referring to how to build components properly.

Jesse Warden
Jesse Warden’s component tutorial. Shows you step by step what to do. Invaluable.

http://www.flashcomponents.net/
A little difficult to read but still good.

levitated.net
Nice to see components that are just for drawing and fun.

Macromedia
Macromedia’s component info. Hidden away on the site.

I have made a new animation for the frontpage of www.bleepbloop.net.

I use the webspace for hosting all kinds of nonsense that I make but it has never made sense for all of it to be available in one place through a single frontpage. So as such I have no intention to bring it all together. Maybe I will find a common link between it all one day and it will make sense.

I create a new animation for the frontpage every now and then and this idea occured to me whilst I was messing with MovieClips and writing classes in Actionscript. I tried to make the animation look as natural as I could. I should really write something so that the falling tiles bump into each other, or bounce off the tiles in the lettering.

This addition may have to wait until I have time.