0.9 Creating custom effects

Table of contents

• Preface
  • General
  • Viewing tip
    • Figures
    • Listings
  • Supplemental material
• General background information
• Preview
• Discussion and sample code
  • Creating a custom effect
  • The class named CustomEffect
  • The class named CustomEffectInstance
  • The Driver class for the program named CustomEffect02
  • The Driver class for the program named CustomEffect03
• Run the program
• Resources
• Complete Program Listings
• Miscellaneous

Preface

General

This tutorial lesson is part of a series of lessons dedicated to object-oriented programming(OOP) with ActionScript.

Several ways to create and launch ActionScript programs

There are several ways to create and launch programs written in the ActionScript programming language.Many of the lessons in this series will use Adobe Flex as the launch pad for the sample ActionScript programs.

An earlier lesson titled The Default Application Container provided information on how to get started programming with Adobe's Flex Builder 3. (See Baldwin's Flex programming website .) You should study that lesson before embarking on the lessons in this series.

Some understanding of Flex MXML will be required

I also recommend that you study all of the lessons on Baldwin's Flex programming website in parallel withyour study of these ActionScript lessons. Eventually you will probably need to understand both ActionScript and Flex and the relationships that exist betweenthem in order to become a successful ActionScript programmer.

Will emphasize ActionScript code

It is often possible to useeither ActionScript code or Flex MXML code to achieve the same result. Insofar as this series of lessons is concerned, the emphasis will be on ActionScriptcode even in those cases where Flex MXML code may be a suitable alternative.

Viewing tip

I recommend that you open another copy of this document in a separate browser window and use the followinglinks to easily find and view the figures and listings while you are reading about them.

Figures

• Figure 1 . Program output at startup.
• Figure 2 . CustomEffect02 output after clicking a button.

Listings

• Listing 1 . Common MXML Code.
• Listing 2 . Beginning of the class named CustomEffect.
• Listing 3 . The constructor for the class named CustomEffect.
• Listing 4 . Override the initInstance method.
• Listing 5 . Override the getAffectedProperties method.
• Listing 6 . Beginning of the CustomEffectInstance class.
• Listing 7 . Declare variables for storage of effect properties.
• Listing 8 . The constructor for the CustomEffectInstance class.
• Listing 9 . Override the inherited play method.
• Listing 10 . Play the three effects in parallel.
• Listing 11 . Beginning of the Driver class for CustomEffect02.
• Listing 12 . Beginning of the constructor for the Driver class.
• Listing 13 . Set properties on the custom effect.
• Listing 14 . The common click event handler.
• Listing 15 . Beginning of the Driver class for CustomEffect03.
• Listing 16 . Set properties on the custom effect.
• Listing 17 . Apply the effect to the two buttons individually.
• Listing 18 . Common MXML code used for both programs.
• Listing 19 . Source code for the class named CustomEffect.
• Listing 20 . Source code for the class named CustomEffectInstance.
• Listing 21 . Driver class for the program named CustomEffect02.
• Listing 22 . Driver class for the program named CustomEffect03.