MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-LEARNING FLASH LITE 1.X ACTIONSCRIPT User manual

Learning Flash Lite 1.X ActionScript

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Acknowledgments

Project Management: Mary Leigh Burke

Writing: Tim Statler

Managing Editor: Rosana Francescato

Editing: Linda Adler, Geta Carlson, Evelyn Eldridge, Mary Kraemer, Lisa Stanziano

Production Management: Patrice O’Neill, Kristin Conradi, Yuko Yagi

Media Design and Production: Adam Barnett, Aaron Begley, Paul Benkman. John Francis, Geeta Karmarkar, Masayo Noda,

Paul Rangel, Arena Reed, Mario Reynoso

Special thanks to Lisa Friendly, Bonnie Loo, Erick Vera, the beta testers, and the entire Flash Lite engineering and QA teams.

First Edition: September 2005

Macromedia, Inc.

601 Townsend St.

San Francisco, CA 94103

Contents

Chapter 1: About Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Differences between Flash Lite 1.0 and Flash Lite 1.1 ActionScript . . . 6

Flash 4 ActionScript not supported by Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript. . . . 6

Features not available in Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Chapter 2: Flash 4 ActionScript Primer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Getting and setting movie clip properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Controlling other timelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Using variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Emulating arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Working with text and strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Using the call() function to create functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Using the eval() function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Chapter 3: Common Scripting Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Determining device and platform capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Opening a web page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Initiating a phone call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Initiating a text or multimedia message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Initiating an e-mail message. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Loading external SWF files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Loading external data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4Contents

CHAPTER 1

About Flash Lite 1.x

ActionScript

You use ActionScript to add programming logic and interactivity to your Macromedia Flash

Lite applications. The version of ActionScript in Flash Lite 1.0 and 1.1—referred to

collectively as Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript—is a hybrid of Flash 4 ActionScript, plus additional

commands and properties specific the Flash Lite player, such as the ability to initiate phone

calls or text messages, or get time and date information from the device.

This chapter contains the following topics:

Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Differences between Flash Lite 1.0 and Flash Lite 1.1 ActionScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Flash 4 ActionScript not supported by Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Features not available in Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript overview

Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript consists of the following parts:

Flash Player 4 ActionScript This includes operators (for example, comparison and

assignment operators), movie clip properties (for example, _height, _x, and _y), Timeline

control functions (for example, gotoAndPlay() or stop()), and network functions, such as

the loadVariables() and loadMovie() functions (Flash Lite 1.1 only). For a list of

unsupported Flash 4 ActionScript, see “Flash 4 ActionScript not supported by Flash Lite 1.x

ActionScript” on page 6.

Phone integration commands and properties Flash Lite provides commands that let you,

for example, query the date and time information from the device, initiate a phone call or

short message service (SMS) text message, or start external applications installed on

the device.

Platform capability variables (Flash Lite 1.1 only) These properties provide information

about the capabilities of the device or Flash Lite runtime environment. For example, the

_capLoadData variable indicates if your application can load data over the network.

6 About Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript

fscommand2() function Like the fscommand() function, you use fscommand2() to

communicate with the host environment or system—in this case, the mobile phone or device.

The fscommand2() function provides enhancements to fscommand(), including the ability

to pass an arbitrary number of arguments and to retrieve immediate return values (rather than

having to wait until the next frame, as with fscommand()).

Differences between Flash Lite 1.0 and

Flash Lite 1.1 ActionScript

The following Flash Lite 1.1 ActionScript features are not available in Flash Lite 1.0:

■Network access or network status information. For example, in Flash Lite 1.0 you cannot

use the loadVariables() or loadMovie() functions to load external data or SWF files,

or the various fscommand2() commands for determining a device’s connection signal

strength or the status of a network request.

■Getting time and date information from the device.

■Platform capability variables, which provide information about the capabilities of the

Flash Lite platform and of the device.

■The fscommand2() function and its associated commands, such as SetSoftKeys and

FullScreen.

■The scroll and maxscroll text field properties.

Flash 4 ActionScript not supported by

Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript

The following Flash 4 ActionScript features are unsupported, or only partially supported, in

Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript:

■The startDrag() and stopDrag() functions.

■Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript supports a subset of the button events supported in Flash

Player 4. For more information about handling button events, see Chapter 1, “Creating

Interactivity and Navigation” in Developing Flash Lite Applications.

■Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript supports a subset of key events supported in Flash Player 4.

For more information about supported key events in Flash Lite, see Chapter 1, “Creating

Interactivity and Navigation” in Developing Flash Lite Applications.

■The _dropTarget property.

Features not available in Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript 7

■The _soundBufTime property.

■The _url property.

■The String() conversion function.

Features not available in Flash Lite 1.x

ActionScript

Because Flash Lite player is based on an older version of Flash Player, it does not support all

the programming features available in more recent releases of Flash Player or other

programming languages that you might be familiar with. This section discusses programming

features not available in Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript and available alternatives and

work-arounds.

User-defined functions Flash Lite 1.x does not support the ability to define and call

custom functions. However, you can use the call() function to execute code that resides on

an arbitrary frame in the timeline. For more information, see “Using the call() function to

create functions” on page 13.

Native arrays, objects, or other complex data types Flash Lite 1.x does not support

native array data structures or other complete data types. However, you can emulate arrays

using pseudo-arrays, a technique that involves using the eval() function to dynamically

evaluate concatenated strings. For more information, see “Emulating arrays” on page 11.

Runtime loading of external image or sound files Unlike the desktop version of Flash

Player, Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript cannot load external JPEG files or MP3 files. In Flash Lite

1.1 you can use the loadMovie() function to load external SWF files. For more information,

see “Loading external SWF files” on page 22.

8 About Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript

CHAPTER 2

Flash 4 ActionScript Primer

Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript is based on the version of ActionScript that was first available in

Flash Player 4. Consequently, several programming features available in later versions of Flash

Player (for desktop systems) are not available to Flash Lite 1.x applications.

If you’re unfamiliar with Flash 4 ActionScript syntax and features or if you’ve forgotten some

of the details from previous Flash development work, this chapter provides a primer on using

Flash 4 ActionScript in your Flash Lite applications.

This chapter contains the following topics:

Getting and setting movie clip properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Controlling other timelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Using variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Emulating arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Working with text and strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Using the call() function to create functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Using the eval() function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

Getting and setting movie clip properties

To get or set a movie clip property (if settable), you can use dot syntax or the setProperty()

or getProperty() functions. You can also use the tellTarget() function.

To use dot syntax, specify the movie clip instance name, followed by a dot (.) and then the

property name. For example, the following code gets the xscreen coordinate (represented by

the _x movie clip property) of the movie clip named cartoonArea, and assigns the result to a

variable named x_pos.

x_pos = cartoonArea._x;

The following example is equivalent to the previous example, but uses the getProperty()

function to retrieve the movie clip’s xposition:

x_pos = getProperty(cartoonArea, _x);

10 Flash 4 ActionScript Primer

The setProperty() function lets you set a property of a movie clip instance, as shown in the

following example:

setProperty(cartoonArea, _x, 100);

The following example is equivalent to the previous example but uses dot syntax:

cartoonArea._x = 100;

You can also get or set movie clip properties from within a tellTarget() statement. The

following code is equivalent to the setProperty() example shown previously:

tellTarget("/cartoonArea") {

_x = 100;

}

For more information about the tellTarget() function, see “Controlling other timelines”

on page 10.

Controlling other timelines

To specify a path to a timeline, use slash syntax (/) combined with dots (..) to build the path

reference. You can also use _levelN, _root, or _parent from Flash 5 notation to refer to,

respectively, a specific movie level, the application’s root timeline, or the parent timeline.

For example, suppose you had a movie clip instance named box on your SWF file’s main

timeline. The box instance, in turn, contains another movie clip instance named cards. The

following examples target the movie clip cards from the main timeline:

tellTarget("/box/cards")

tellTarget("_level0/box/cards")

The following example targets the main timeline from the movie clip cards:

tellTarget("../../cards")

tellTarget("_root")

The following example targets the parent movie clip cards:

tellTarget("../cards")

tellTarget("_parent/cards")

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