Foundation ActionScript / Sham Bhangal.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The stun design site, constructed as the case study in Foundation ActionScript, is viewable at www.friendsofed.com/extras/1903450322/stun/index.html .

Flash 5 is Macromedia's incredibly successful motion graphics creation package. Flash 5 implements a vastly expanded and more powerful range of ActionScript components. It is ActionScript, coupled with Flash's exceptional graphical facilities, that makes Flash the de facto standard for interactive, graphically-rich web sites and applications. The new implementation makes ActionScript an even more important part of the Flash landscape.

Foundation ActionScript provides a raft of new features for the Flash designer to use. To fully exploit these features, the designer will need to understand a basic set of programming constructs and principles. This book will teach those principles in the Flash 5 context, providing the reader with a solid base to develop more complex ActionScript skills. The book has a strong tutorial thrust, focusing on building the core skills that the reader needs to master Flash ActionScript. The skills and techniques are built in self-contained chapters that combine into an ongoing case study to build a rich knowledge base in the reader's mind.

Flash 5 beginners who've read an introductory text and need a much more in-depth introduction to ActionScript.

Flash 4 users who need a fuller understanding of ActionScript as implemented in Flash 5.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (p. 1)
• Welcome (p. 1)
• Our Aims and Philosophy in this Book (p. 2)
• FLAs for Download (p. 4)
• What You'll Need to Know (p. 4)
• The Movie Explorer (p. 5)
• The Stage (p. 6)
• Flash Settings (p. 7)
• Support: we're here for you (p. 8)
• Layout Conventions used in this Book (p. 9)
• PCs and Macs (p. 9)
• 1 Starting Out (p. 11)
• Events and How to Handle Them (p. 12)
• Events in Flash (p. 13)
• Real-time Events (p. 14)
• Comments (p. 23)
• Commands, Arguments and Properties (p. 26)
• Instructions (p. 27)
• Syntax (p. 26)
• Nesting (p. 28)
• Summary (p. 39)
• 2 Making Plans (p. 41)
• Making Plans (p. 42)
• A Library of Ideas (p. 43)
• Storyboarding (p. 44)
• Building your ActionScript (p. 48)
• Thinking from the Top Down (p. 48)
• Thinking from the Bottom Up (p. 50)
• Flowcharting (p. 54)
• stun:design Web Site (p. 57)
• Summary (p. 60)
• 3 Timeline Actions (p. 63)
• Timeline Paths (p. 65)
• Adding Basic Timeline Actions (p. 70)
• Adding Labels to the Timeline (p. 77)
• Stun:Design Web Site (p. 91)
• Summary (p. 94)
• 4 Basic Interactivity (p. 97)
• Interactivity and MovieClips (p. 106)
• Using Button Events to Build Interactivity (p. 115)
• Using Button Events for Navigation (p. 116)
• Summary (p. 129)
• 5 Navigation Tricks (p. 131)
• Invisible Buttons (p. 132)
• Site Structure (p. 137)
• Linking Scenes (p. 137)
• Linking Labels (p. 138)
• Linking Movieclips (p. 139)
• Linking SWFs and Levels (p. 140)
• Stun:design Interface (p. 141)
• Adding Animations to Buttons (p. 142)
• Draggable Windows (p. 144)
• Summary (p. 156)
• 6 Variables (p. 159)
• Variables (p. 160)
• Values and Types (p. 162)
• Literals and Expressions (p. 162)
• Literal Values (p. 163)
• Expressions (p. 163)
• Input and Output (p. 164)
• Using String Expressions (p. 170)
• Naming Variables (p. 171)
• Storing Numbers (p. 173)
• More Uses for Numeric Expressions (p. 176)
• Boolean Values (p. 176)
• ActionScript Objects, Properties, and Methods (p. 180)
• Objects (p. 180)
• The Math Object (p. 181)
• The String Object (p. 182)
• Summary (p. 185)
• 7 Looping and Decision Making (p. 187)
• Decision Making (p. 188)
• Real Life Decisions (p. 188)
• Flash Decisions (p. 189)
• The if Action (p. 192)
• The elseif Action (p. 198)
• The else Action (p. 202)
• Looping (p. 205)
• ActionScript Loops (p. 206)
• For Loops (p. 216)
• Arrays (p. 219)
• The Hangman Game (p. 226)
• Graphics (p. 226)
• Code (p. 227)
• The stun:design Web Site (p. 236)
• Summary (p. 242)
• 8 Sound (p. 245)
• The Sound Object (p. 246)
• The setPan(); Method (p. 258)
• The setVolume(); Method (p. 259)
• Starting and Stopping Sounds (p. 262)
• ActionScript and Streaming (p. 263)
• The stun:design Web Site (p. 264)
• Creating the Sound Object (p. 273)
• Summary (p. 276)
• 9 Advanced Interactivity (p. 279)
• Instances Re-visited (p. 280)
• How Flash Thinks (p. 281)
• Classes (p. 282)
• Methods (p. 283)
• Properties (p. 284)
• Behaviors (p. 286)
• Defining Objects (p. 287)
• Movieclips (p. 288)
• Non-graphic Objects (p. 288)
• Advanced Interactivity and Object Properties (p. 288)
• Planning our Preloader and Cache Detector (p. 289)
• ActionScripting our Preloader and Cache Detector (p. 290)
• The Preloader (p. 292)
• The Intro (p. 294)
• The stun:design Showreel (p. 302)
• The stun:design Web Site (p. 309)
• Creating Structure (p. 310)
• Navigation Overview (p. 314)
• The Menubar (p. 315)
• The Main Timeline (p. 321)
• Summary (p. 324)
• 10 Modular Actionscript (p. 327)
• Modular ActionScript (p. 328)
• Black Box Programming (p. 329)
• Behavior Movieclips (p. 339)
• Creating Real Movement (p. 346)
• Inertia Behavior (p. 348)
• Swarm Behavior (p. 352)
• Smart Clips (p. 358)
• The stun:design Web Site (p. 360)
• Hiding Pages (p. 367)
• Summary (p. 376)
• 11 Sprites (p. 379)
• What is a Sprite? (p. 380)
• Control (p. 382)
• Global and Localized Data (p. 383)
• Movement (p. 384)
• Collision (p. 385)
• Planning stun:zapper (p. 389)
• The Game World (the global level) (p. 392)
• screenTop, Bottom, Right, Left (p. 392)
• score (p. 393)
• level, skill, accel (p. 393)
• speed (p. 393)
• shipDead, fired, shipHeight (p. 393)
• The Player (the ship object and its interfaces) (p. 396)
• The SwarmAlien (the alien1 object and its interfaces) (p. 399)
• The Bullet (the bullet object and its interfaces) (p. 404)
• The Debris of War (p. 406)
• The stun:design Web Site (p. 407)
• Page 1 Splash (p. 408)
• Page 2 Intro (p. 412)
• Page 3 The Main Content (p. 419)
• The Window Graphics and Buttons (p. 424)
• The Content Movie Clip (p. 430)
• The Window Behavior (p. 432)
• Integration (p. 435)
• The Last Two Buttons (p. 438)
• The Last Farewell (p. 441)
• A Glossary (p. 443)
• B Events (p. 449)
• Button Events (p. 449)
• Movie Events (p. 452)
• C Properties (p. 455)
• D Operator Precedence (p. 463)
• Variables (p. 463)
• Operators (p. 464)
• E Flash 5 Compatibility (p. 471)
• Converting Legacy Flash FLAs to Flash 5 (p. 472)
• Exporting Flash 5 Content for Compatibility with Legacy versions (p. 477)
• F Debugging (p. 481)
• Avoiding Errors in the First Place (p. 481)
• Common Mistakes (p. 482)
• Debugging Tools (p. 483)
• Index (p. 489)