Our hands-on ActionScript training course will give you a solid grounding in the language and syntax, Object Oriented Programming principals, and teach you how to put it all together in a well optimised interactive Flash movie.

ActionScript 3 is a full-on OO Programming language and is a great deal more powerful than its predecessors.

Coupled with enterprise frameworks like Flex, or employed to create controls and complex functionality alongside streaming Flash Video, ActionScript can very capably form the backbone of your online presence.

 

• ActionScript 3.0 Language & Syntax
• Object Oriented Programming (OOP) with ActionScript 3.0
• Controlling Layout with AS3 code
• Stage management
• User Interaction & Flow Control
• Coding Best Practices
• Handling Audio / Video basics
• Using external Text & XML

Web Developers who want to increase the functionality and integration capabilities of their Flash movies and sites. Learning ActionScript 3 is also stepping stone to developing enterprise Flex 4 apps.

Delegates should have attended our Intro to Flash development training course or have equivalent experience.

Introduction to ActionScript 3.0 (AS3)

AS3 capabilities AS3 files and document settings
Tying AS3 code to the timeline
Layers and structural best practices

ActionScript 3.0 Language & SyntaxVariables

Data types
Assigning Values
Complex data types
Debugging & commenting your code

Controlling Layout in Code

Naming conventions best practices
Strong data typing
Defining aliases
Type-casting
Tweaking movie clip attributes / properties
Dealing with Time

Stage Management

Must-know properties:

• frameRate,
• fullScreenWidth,
• fullScreenHeight,
• displayState,
• wmodeGPU

Stage dimensions

Coding Best Practices

Calling functions
Passing objects to functions Arrays, Loops and Enumeration
Automating repetitive tasks
Importing external libraries Instantiation

User Interaction & Flow Control

Event listeners
Mouse events
Drag and drop
Event.target
Starting and stopping a timeline
Audio & Visual Feedback – emulating “thick” client behaviours
Sorting Lists

Tweening with Scripts

Coding your tweens
Importing classes
Easing

Object Oriented Programming (OOP) with ActionScript 3.0

Objects
Classes
Constructors
Separating code from the Timeline
The Document Class
Applying OOP to Graphics
Graphics as objects
Drawing API Gradient fills & Tints
Leveraging existing libraries

Inheritance

What is Inheritance?
Working from design specifications / UML diagrams

Library Symbols

Separating design & code
Public & Private instance variables
Adding items to the Stage

Keeping Track of Classes

Instance and class variable scope
Static variables
Iterating through an array

Allowing Our Objects to Move

Instance variables
Setters/getters
The 'enter frame' event
Trigonometry and the Point class
Checking for Movieclip visibility through code
Collision avoidance - Hit tests

Handling  Video

Creating simple playback controls
Toggling controls
Displaying file names
Handling Audio mp3 support – import & playback id3 meta tags
Controlling sound levels
Audio Event Listeners

Using the Camera Class

Checking for and integrating with web cams
Motion tracking
Taking & displaying a snapshot
Bitmaps

Site building with multiple SWFs

Project publish list
Scene Design Including a preloader / progress bar
Putting it all together

Fun with Text

Using flowComposer to lay out and format text programmatically
Handling Fonts
Importing & formatting text on the fly
Creating usable scrollbars for text areas

Fun with XML

Why use XML?
Importing & parsing XML into Value Objects
Looping through nodes
Tracing out the data

Related courses

adobe3 Adobe Flex & AIR Development Training Course

adobe4 Flash Video Training Course