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The ‘new’ Class keyword and creating dynamic buttons in AS3

I use dynamic movieclips in almost every project I work on and AS3’s new method of adding dynamic movieclips to the stage makes it easy, instead of using AS2’s duplicateMovieClip() method. I will show you some tips and tricks to easily create applications in which dynamic movieclips are used and easily manage those movieclips.

1. Create a movieclip with a linked Class
First create a new AS3 project in Flash and create a new movieclip (Insert > New Symbol…), let’s call it MenuButton. In the Linkage properties (click the Advanced button if needed), check the Export for ActionScript box and for this example just leave all the settings like they are so click OK. You can put anything inside the movieclip you want but for this example I’m putting in a black box with the following properties: X:0, Y:0, width:100, height:20. Now return to the root scene, highlight the empty keyframe and open the actions tab.

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Mouse Proximity Blur Tutorial

How to make a menu or icons with a proximity blur effect

A mouse proximity blur is an effect which means the amount of blur on the movie clip is dependent on the distance between the movie clip and the mouse cursor.

In this tutorial, I will take you through a very basic and easy tutorial on how to set up a simple iconic menu and walk you through the ActionScript (AS3) to add this effect on the menu. I first created the mouse proximity blur menu as an experiment in my last post here. This is what the finished product will look like:

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Introduction to OOP

OOP: Object Oriented Programming

Object Oriented Programming is a concept rather than a technique or method of coding.  However, within the concept of OOP, there are certain techniques and methods.  Object Oriented Programming (OOP) is an object-based style of programming that uses objects to store and work with data. Templates known as classes are used to define the properties and methods that make up objects in code.  So the point of it is to easily re-use robust code, making developing applications much easier, stronger, and allows more possibilities.

In this tutorial, I will take you through a very basic and easy, but very powerful method and aspect of OOP in Flash.  We will create a loading circle that spins around by attaching external code to the movie clip.  This will hopefully demonstrate to you the power of OOP.

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