www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info ActionScript ® 3.0 Bible www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info ActionScript ® 3.0 Bible Second Edition Roger Braunstein Wiley Publishing, Inc. www.it-ebooks.info ActionScript ® 3.0 Bible Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. 10475 Crosspoint Boulevard Indianapolis, IN 46256 www.wiley.com Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada ISBN: 978-0-470-52523-4 Manufactured in the United States of America 10987654321 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. 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Library of Congress Control Number: 2009943640 Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. ActionScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. www.it-ebooks.info About the Author Roger Braunstein is a multidisciplinary programmer and the Chief Roger Officer of partlyhuman inc., an independent development and design shop in Brooklyn, NY. Roger is an author of the first edition of ActionScript 3.0 Bible, and a short e-book, Introduction to Flex 2. Roger builds games, mobile apps, interactive art, tools, web apps, and websites using any technology he can wrap his head around. In just the past two years he’s built stuff for LEGO, MoMA, Tim Burton, Antony and the Johnsons, AOL, HBO, Puma, General Mills, Sport Chalet, Pepsi, Coke, OMGPOP, the French Culinary Institute, and more. Additionally, he keeps busy with a series of independent projects. When not in front of a com- puter, Roger enjoys normal human activities such as biking, cooking, reading, traveling, taking photos, roller-skating, and dancing to music made on GameBoys. He is perpetually too preoccupied to put anything interesting on his site http://partlyhuman.com/, but you can use it to get in touch with him. www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Credits Acquisitions Editor Scott Meyers Project Editor Brian MacDonald Technical Editor Caleb Johnston Production Editor Daniel Scribner Copy Editor Karen Gill Editorial Director Robyn B. Siesky Editorial Manager Mary Beth Wakefield Marketing Manager David Mayhew Production Manager Tim Tate Vice President and Executive Group Publisher Richard Swadley Vice President and Executive Publisher Barry Pruett Associate Publisher Jim Minatel Project Coordinator, Cover Lynsey Stanford Proofreader Nancy Bell Indexer Robert Swanson Cover Image Joyce Haughey Cover Designer Michael E. Trent www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info [...]... xli Part I: ActionScript 3.0 Language Basics 1 Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter 1: 2: 3: 4: 5: Introducing ActionScript 3.0 3 ActionScript 3.0 Language Basics 15 Functions and Methods 39 Object Oriented Programming 51 Validating Your Program .103 Part II: Core ActionScript 3.0 Data Types ... Applications .911 Index .921 xii www.it-ebooks.info Introduction xli Part I: ActionScript 3.0 Language Basics 1 Chapter 1: Introducing ActionScript 3.0 3 What Is ActionScript 3.0? .3 Exploring the Flash Platform 4 A Programmer’s Perspective 5 Language .5 API ... 10 In Short .11 From ActionScript 2.0 to ActionScript 3.0 11 Display List 11 Runtime Errors 12 Runtime Data Types 12 Method Closures 12 Intrinsic Event Model 12 Regular Expressions 12 E4X 12 Summary 13 Chapter 2: ActionScript 3.0 Language Basics ... Functions 814 Interfacing with Pixel Bender Kernels 817 Loading the Bytecode 817 Running a Kernel in ActionScript 818 Manipulating a Kernel 819 A Basic Shader in ActionScript 820 An Effect Shader in ActionScript 821 Bending Other Data .826 Preparing Data for Pixel Bender .826 BitmapData ... Bitmaps, Vectors, and Bitmap Caching 298 More on Rendering 299 Summary 299 Chapter 15: Working in Three Dimensions 301 Introducing 3D in ActionScript 3.0 301 The 3D Coordinate System 303 3D in Flash Professional 304 Limitations of 3D Display Objects 304 Display Objects are Flat 305 A Viewport... Professional and Flash Builder 104 Debugging in Flash Professional 104 Debugging in Flash Builder 106 Fixing Errors 108 Summary 110 Part II: Core ActionScript 3.0 Data Types 111 Chapter 6: Text, Strings, and Characters 113 Working with String Literals .113 Using Escaped Characters 114 Converting to and from... Representing Numbers 126 Digital Representations of Numbers 126 Unsigned Integers 126 Signed Integers .127 Floating-Point Numbers 127 Using Numbers in ActionScript 128 Number .128 int 129 uint 129 Literals .130 Edge Cases 130 Not a Number 131 Infinity... Nested Data .189 XML as Objects 189 JSON 190 Summary 190 Chapter 11: XML and E4X 191 Getting Started with XML in ActionScript 191 XML References .191 E4X References 192 XML Literals .192 A Brief Introduction to E4X Operators and Syntax 194 Legacy XML Handling... Gathering Meta-Information about XML Nodes 213 Finding Node Types 213 Determining the Type of Content in a Node 214 Using Namespaces .215 Creating XML Namespaces in ActionScript .216 Using the Namespace Class 216 Using the Namespace Keyword .217 Making Namespaces Available .217 xix www.it-ebooks.info Contents Querying Namespaced... 257 Binary Concepts 257 Bit Math and Operators .260 Basic Arithmetic 260 Bit Shifting 260 Bitwise Logic .262 Binary Types in ActionScript 263 Using ByteArray 265 Creating a ByteArray 265 Writing Data 265 Reading Data .265 Compressing and Decompressing . else 30 switch 30 The Conditional Operator 31 Repeating Actions Using Loops 33 Using for Loops 33 Using for in and for each in 34 for in 34 for each in 34 Using. parents. ix www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Introduction xli PartI :ActionScript3 .0LanguageBasics 1 Chapter 1: Introducing ActionScript 3. 0 3 Chapter 2: ActionScript 3. 0 Language Basics 15 Chapter 3: Functions