Dipping my toes into Flash CS4 and AS3

26 Jun 2009 No Comments

by eviltwinin code, flash

Well, I downloaded the Flash CS4 trial and have been experimenting with it for a day or so.

Overall I’m positive about what I’ll be able to do with the AS3, but a little disappointed in Flash CS4. I’ve never been that excited about the fancy new features in it, although I’m sure I will end up finding them useful. What my problem is, is that there was a few things about the interface and set up that I’d hope they would have improved.

The main one is the colour palette. You still can’t save swatches or custom colours. How annoying! It is also irritating that the ‘Free Transform’ and ‘Gradient Transform’ tools are together – it does get frustrating having to click between them when you are doing a lot of resizing and colour shading.

I have struggled a little today with AS3, but I think a good sit down reading ‘Learning ActionScript 3.0′ will probably let me understand better how it’s structured, then it will be a lot easier to make the transition from AS2 – I’m already am quite fond of the event listener.

ActionScript Naming Conventions

04 Jun 2009 2 Comments

by eviltwinin code, flash

Well, in the midst of the Flash interactive feature I’ve been working on, I decided it really was about time I set myself a naming convention to follow when writing Actionscript code. I’ve always been a bit haphazard about how I name things, which in the long run will make it difficult for someone else to understand or to re-use. I also need to remember to use descriptive names for things. This will make it much easier for someone else reading the code to understand what each thing is or what it is doing.

Anyway, this is probably a work in progress, but at least I’ve gotten started!

Read more here: Abobe ActionScript 2.0 Best Practices – Naming Conventions

So, here it is:

Classes

  • Start with Uppercase
  • Concatenate words, using mixed cases

class MyClass

Functions & Objects

  • Start with lowercase
  • Concatenate words, using mixed cases

function myFunction

Movie Clips

  • Prefix with ‘mc’
  • After prefix start with Uppercase
  • Concatenate words, using mixed cases

mcMyMovieClip

Constants

  • All uppercase
  • Separate words should contain underscores

    • MY_CONSTANT

Number variables

  • Prefix with ‘num’
  • After prefix start with Uppercase
  • Concatenate words, using mixed cases

numMyNumber

String variables

  • Prefix with ’str’
  • After prefix start with Uppercase
  • Concatenate words, using mixed cases

strMyString

Arrays

  • Prefix with ‘arr’
  • After prefix start with Uppercase
  • Concatenate words, using mixed cases

arrMyArray

Boolean expressions

  • Prefix with ‘is’
  • After prefix start with Uppercase
  • Concatenate words, using mixed cases

isThisOn