What is the ActionScript 3 RIA API Guide?

This ActionScript reference for rich Internet application development provides an alphabetical reference for all native ActionScript APIs for the Adobe Flash platform runtimes: Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR-as well as the Adobe Flex framework APIs.  The RIA guide has been recently updated to include the API changes effected by Adobe AIR 1.5, Flex 3.2 and Flash Player 10.

Additional Resources:

• Download the guide
• ActionScript 3 Language Reference
• Adobe AIR documentation

With the Flash on the Beach conference wrapping up at Brighton, UK, Peter Elst just posted a video on the keynote held at this year’s conference.  This year’s keynote is given by Richard Galvan,Serge Jespers and Mark Doherty as they took the stage to talk about Flash CS4, AIR and Flash Lite.  Enjoy!

Developer and trainer Dan Carr explains and demonstrates the basics of creating the basics of creating an ActionScript 3.0 class.

The idea of this video is meant to get rid of the butterflies a Flash user might have when they hear the word external class.  Though the example is simple, hopefully the concept of an external class will stick.  Enjoy!

Check out the video!

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a timer in Adobe Flash that will count down the time to a given date in days, hours, minutes, and seconds. If you were looking for a great Flash tool for counting down holidays, birthdays, etc, this is the tutorial for you.

Also, this Flash countdown timer tutorial allows you to preset any day of your choice with in AS2 and AS3. Have fun!

Create the Flash Countdown Timer in AS2

This tutorial will go over the basics on constructing a Flash countdown timer within Actionscript 2.0.

Step 1: Create a dynamic text field with the string value of “00:00:00:00″. Note:this is simply to get the text field to the size needed for the dynamic content.

Step 2: Delete the string value of text field and name the text field “time_txt”.

Step 3: Create a new layer named “actions” and insert the following code in the first keyframe:

Source File: countDownTimer.fla

[box type="note"]Update: Based on your feedback on this tutorial, I decided to create a hassle free CountdownTimer AS3 class that will assist in creating your very own flash countdown timer. Learn how to create a Flash Countdown in AS3 using this class.[/box]

//onEnterFrame allows for a function to be called every tick
this.onEnterFrame = function()
{
	//Stores the current date
	var today:Date = new Date();
	//Stores the Current Year
	var currentYear = today.getFullYear();
	//Stores the Current Time
	var currentTime = today.getTime();
	//Creates and stores the target date
	var targetDate:Date = new Date(currentYear,11,25);
	var targetTime = targetDate.getTime();
	//Determines how much time is left.  Note: Leaves time in milliseconds
	var timeLeft = targetTime - currentTime;
	var sec = Math.floor(timeLeft/1000);
	var min = Math.floor(sec/60);
	var hours = Math.floor(min/60);
	var days = Math.floor(hours/24);
	//Takes results of var remaining value.  Also converts "sec" into a string
	sec = String(sec % 60);
	//Once a string, you can check the values length and see whether it has been reduced below 2.
	//If so, add a "0" for visual purposes.
	if(sec.length < 2){
		sec = "0" + sec;
	}
	min = String(min % 60);
	if(min.length < 2){
		min = "0" + min;
	}
	hours = String(hours % 24);
	if(hours.length < 2){
		hours = "0" + hours;
	}
	days = String(days);

	if(timeLeft > 0 ){
		//Joins all values into one string value
		var counter:String = days + ":" + hours + ":" + min + ":" + sec;
		time_txt.text = counter;
	}else{
		trace("TIME'S UP");
        var newTime:String = "00:00:00:00";
        time_txt.text = newTime;
        delete (this.onEnterFrame);
	}
}

Here’s a great example on how to creatively use morphing text within Adobe Flash. The video is by Bert Lee of LearnFlash.com. This is just one of many ways you can possibly morph text inside of flash. Great tutorial if you never really toyed with the morphing tween inside of Adobe Flash before. Take a look for yourself.

via LearnFlash

Below are the expected results of this video tutorial: