Applied ActionScript 3.0 is our flagship course teaching ActionScript. We took care writing it, imagining at every stage what we, as trainees, would like to gain from such a course. The result is, as far as we know, the most comprehensive anywhere in the world teaching ActionScript 3.0.
Course contents
Revision 3 (July 2010)
- Unit 1: Introduction
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- About the course
- About your trainer
- Pre-requisites
- How the course is structured
- A realistic project
- Useful theory
- Course hours
- After-course support
- Previewing the course project
- How to approach programming
- Some required skills of a successful programmer
- Introducing ActionScript 3.0
- A list of changes with ActionScript 3.0
- ActionScript 3.0 compatibility
- About the course
- Unit 2: Setting up the work environment
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- A tour of IDEs
- Introduction
- Adobe Flex Builder
- FlashDevelop
- Establishing the working folders
- About the configuration folders installed with Flash
- About classpaths
- About packages
- Configuring FlashDevelop
- A tour of IDEs
- Unit 3: Beginning the project
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- The anatomy of a Flash project
- The FLA
- Disadvantages of using the timeline
- ActionScript files
- External assets
- The FLA
- Creating the initial files
- Creating the FLA
- Classes
- The Array class
- The structure of a class file
- CamelCase
- Comments
- The "package" keyword
- Curly braces
- Semi-colons
- Import statements
- Class definition
- The "extends" keyword
- Static variables
- Instance variables
- Static methods
- Constructor functions
- Instance methods
- Accessor methods
- Class property attributes
- Creating a class file
- Associating a class file with an FLA
- Trace statements
- The anatomy of a Flash project
- Unit 4: Populating the main class
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- The Display List
- About the display list
- Display object types
- Advantages of the display list
- Manipulating the display list
- Adding items to the display list
- The display list and depth
- Removing items from the display list
- Traversing the display list
- Other useful properties and methods of display objects
- About variables
- Creating a Sprite
- Functions
- The basic structure of a function
- Arguments
- Return type
- Local variables
- The void return type
- The basic structure of a function
- Using TextFields
- Creating TextFields with code
- Embedding fonts
- Using stylesheets
- The Drawing API
- Introducing the Shape class
- The graphics property
- Using the Drawing API
- Introducing the Shape class
- Handling the stage
- Accessing the stage
- Changing stage behaviour
- Hiding the default menu
- Keeping content centred
- Creating an event handler
- Listening for events
- Using constants
- The Display List
- Unit 5: Beginning the Accordion Menu
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- The Accordion Menu class
- Modelling an application
- Dividing a project into classes
- Dividing the Accordion Menu into classes
- Creating the shell of the AccordionMenu class
- Instantiating the AccordionMenu class from the main class
- Working with XML
- Introduction to XML
- Using CDATA
- Introducing E4X
- ActionScript 3.0’s XML handling classes
- Loading XML
- URLRequest
- URLLoader
- Accessing loaded XML data
- Accessing the XML document itself
- Accessing a list of elements by name
- Accessing a particular element
- Accessing an attribute by name
- Accessing XML data anonymously
- Looping through XML data
- More to E4X
- Populating the Accordion menu with XML
- Preparing the XML file
- Creating a function to load the XML
- Sending the XML into the Accordion menu
- Introduction to XML
- The Accordion Menu class
- Unit 6: Developing the Accordion Menu
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- Further modelling
- Considering the structure
- The AccordionMenu class
- How the menu will work
- The AccordionMenuItem class
- Creating the shell of the AccordionMenuItem class
- Populating the menu with AccordionMenuItems
- Using a for… each… in loop
- Fleshing out the AccordionMenuItem class
- Private and public variables in action
- Using getters and setters
- Displaying and formatting dynamic text from XML
- Masking items with ActionScript
- Further modelling
- Unit 7: Introducing Interactivity
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- About event handling
- Introduction
- Events
- Event objects
- The event flow
- Advantages of the event flow
- Handling events
- Input events
- Implementing event handling
- Assigning event handlers and functions
- Enabling button-like behaviour for Sprites
- Assigning additional event handlers
- About event handling
- Unit 8: Animation in ActionScript 3.0
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- A tour of animation options in ActionScript 3.0
- Introduction
- The problem with conventional tweening
- Direct coding
- The Tween class
- Robert Penner’s easing equations
- Open source tweening solutions
- MCTween
- Tweener
- AS3 Animation System
- Fuse Kit
- Twease
- TweenLite
- Introduction
- Animating AccordionMenuItems
- Installing TweenLite
- Reviewing the application state
- Using TweenLite
- A tour of animation options in ActionScript 3.0
- Unit 9: Loading external display assets
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- Loading and displaying images from XML data
- Reviewing the application
- The ImageLoader class
- Fleshing out the ImageLoader class
- The Loader class
- The URLRequest class
- The LoaderInfo class
- Fine tuning
- Masking loaded images using the Drawing API
- Creating a menu background using the Drawing API
- Fading in loaded images using ActionScript 3.0
- The Timer class
- Introduction to the Tmer class
- Using the Timer class
- Creating filters
- About filters
- Applying filters
- Creating filters
- About filters
- Applying filters
- Preloading external assets
- About preloading
- How to preload in ActionScript 3.0
- Implementing preloading
- Beginning a Preloader class
- Initiating a Preloader instance
- Completing the Preloader class
- Loading and displaying images from XML data
- Unit 10: Wrapping up
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- Embedding Flash applications for the web
- Embedding Flash
- Tags used
- Internet Explorer active content issue
- The bad news
- The good news
- The even better news
- Flash detection
- Automatic notification
- Active X detection
- Previous approaches
- The recommended solution
- Using SWFObject
- ExpressInstall
- Embedding Flash
- Where to go from here
- Where you can go from here
- Useful tips
- Common ‘gotcha’s
- Useful resources
- Where we will go from here
- Advanced ActionScript 3.0
- Where you can go from here
- Embedding Flash applications for the web