I hope you find it useful.

I'll show you a basic example of using SharedObject. We will have an input text field on stage and a button that will save the text in the text field.

Create a new AS3 Document and put a text field on stage and give it an instance name. I will call mine theText_txt.
Next make a button on stage and give it an instance name. I called mine save_btn.

Create a new layer in the main timeline and call it actions and lock it. Open up the actions panel and enter the following:

var mySO:SharedObject;
mySO = SharedObject.getLocal("myfirstSO");

The first line creates the shared object. The second line gets a local shared object called myfirstSO. Nothing is stored in it at the moment but we will assign data to it shortly.

Now when we click the button we want to assign whatever text is in the text field to the shared object. In the actions panel enter:

save_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, saveText);
 
function saveText(e:MouseEvent):void
{
     mySO.data.myText = theText_txt.text;
}

This has now assigned the text in the text field to a variable called myText in the SharedObject.

OK now that the text is saved we will want to populate the text field with that saved data when you open the swf again. In the actions panel enter the following.

if (mySO.data.myText)
{
     theText_txt.text = mySO.data.myText;
}

This checks to see if there is any data in the myText variable in the SharedObject. If there is then it assigns that value to the text field.

Now test the movie. Enter some text in the text field and click your save button. Close the swf and test the movie again. You will see that the text you entered before is in the text field.

You can download the example here: SharedObject.zip

Hope this was helpful,
Ed

For example, you may have a movie clip on stage called myMovieClip. Change the instance name to have an _mc at the end (myMovieClip_mc), and now in your actions panel type myMovieClip_mc and press period. You will now see all the code hinting for a movie clip popup (see image). This can save a whole heap of time when coding.

Here is a list of the different shortcuts that you can use to bring up the code hinting. Some of these are for AS2 but the rest will work with AS3.

I find that using this technique saves me a whole heap of time when programming.

An easy way of creating a button from a movie clip is to give the names of the frames with the different states of the button "_up", "_over" and "_down".

Add a stop(); frame on frame 1 of the movie clip. Then out on the main timeline, open the actions panel and write:

myButton_btn.buttonMode = true;

Just change myButton_btn to the instance name of your movieclip.

Now test the movie and roll over the button and It will now go to the over state. Press down on it and it will go to the down state.

So you do not need to write the code for on roll over, on mouse down and on roll out. Flash will automatically detect what you are wanting to do and do it for you.

Now you may be asking "Why should I do it this way? Why can't I just make it as a regular button?" Well you can still do it that way if you like, however the benefit of doing it this way is that a movie clip is more light weight then a button. This means that flash can run a bit faster.

Cheers,
Ed

Details can be found here: http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/02/tweetcoding_con.html

addFrameScript(9, myFunction);

So it can be a little tricky at first, but once you remember how to reference the frames it can be a very handy little function.

They are really impressive. You are able to view the code for each entry as well.

To search an array starting from the first position in the array we use:

for (var i:int = 0; i < myArray.length; i++)
{
   ...
}

Where you would change myArray with the variable name of your array.

But what if you wanted to search through the array from the last item? Well the easiest way of doing this is by using:

for (var i in myArray)
{
   ...
}

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. - G.I. Joe

Also the names of these have changed. In AS2 they were

_xscale
_yscale
_alpha

In AS3 this has changed to

scaleX
scaleY
alpha