SWFC Manual

5.Buttons

Actionscript comes in handy when dealing with SWF Buttons.

A button defines, in SWF context, an object sensitive to mouse movement, mouse buttons, and key presses.

The following is a trivial example: Four objects which change their shape once the cursor is over it.

		Code listing 5.1
		.flash filename="button1.swf" fps=50 .box box1 color=white fill=#336633 width=50 height=50 .box box2 color=white fill=#99cc99 width=100 height=100 .button mybutton1 .show box1 as=shape x=25 y=25 .show box2 as=hover x=12.5 y=12.5 .end .frame 1 .put b1=mybutton1 .put b2=mybutton1 x=100 red=+255 .put b3=mybutton1 y=100 green=+255 .put b4=mybutton1 x=100 y=100 blue=+255 .end

The .show command (which can only be used inside .button) has a syntax very similar to .put. For every shape a button uses, you can specify the position, color transform, scaling, rotation etc. just like with .put.

The only real difference between those two commands is the as parameter: with that you tell the button when to display that specific shape. There are four allowed parameters to as:

• idle The shape to display when the button is idle, that is, the mouse is somewhere else, and not over the button.
• hover The shape to display if the mouse cursor is inside the button. What exactly is "inside" is defined by area:
• area This shape is not displayed. It serves as bounding box (actually, bounding polygon) for the button. A button considers itself active (that is, the hover shape is active, not the idle shape) if the mouse is inside this area. Also, mouse button clicks have to be in this area for this button.
• pressed The shape to display if the user clicks on the button. This shape is displayed as long as the mouse button is down.