Now that you've started creating interactive applications with Macromedia Flash, what do you think of it? Have you used any other languge, such as Java or a .NET language to create applications that users can download and run in their browsers over HTTP? Do you already know JavaScript? ActionScript? Let us know in the web.design discussion group.
Push Flash Interactivity with ActionScript Buttons
If you're going to make interactive applications you have to give users clickable apparatus. Learn how to create buttons in Flash MX and then assign complex events to those buttons using ActionScript.
by John Lee
April 15, 2003
he last article in this series showed you how to use Graphic Symbols and Movie Clips to create lightweight and more complex Flash movies. This lesson shows you how to create buttons, the third and most powerful kind of symbol in the Flash Library. You'll see how to associate the buttons with ActionScript commands to let end users interact with your Flash movies. ActionScript is Macromedia's proprietary JavaScript-like programming language for Flash MX, and you need to know it if you are going to author Flash files that interact with other Movie Clips, Web sites and even databases.
If you don't have Flash MX, you can download a free 30-day trial version that you can use to explore Flash's capabilities.
Setting Up the Flash MX Work Area and a New Document
After opening Flash MX, click the Window menu and then click on the Panel Sets item. From the options available in PanelSets, select Designer [1024 X 768]. The Color Mixer, Tools, Timeline, and Properties panels remain the dominant palettes, but you need two other panels for this lesson as well. From the Window menu, choose the Library panel so that you can create and store Symbols. Then go back to the Window menu one last time and open the Actions panel. The Actions panel is the method by which you create scripts for Flash objects and timeline frames.
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