Regardless of your opinion on Java, that was 4 years ago and I think Java is still kicking around. In fact, every once in a while I see a blog post about how Java doesn’t suck that bad and there is still a lot of work out there for Java developers. Of course, the response is usually, Java should die and people the work with it should switch. In fact, the same thing is going on with Flash. HTML5 has been killing Flash for a while now, yet I still see comments from Flash developers saying they’re as busy as they’ve ever been.

But this doesn’t just apply to languages that the cool kids don’t like. I’ve even seen a blog post or two stating that Ruby was done because it wasn’t the cool language anymore because the amount of Ruby devs had plateaued or even decreased a little. I can’t find the post, but from what I remember, the author stated Ruby was dying because people had realized Python was better and had moved on. Of course, the response from commenters was less than positive.

And if you’ve spend more than a couple of months as a web developer, you’ve worked with PHP, which is either the greatest thing ever or the worse invention in the history of humankind. I think PHP is a long way from dying but that still doesn’t stop Ruby and Python devs out there saying it’s on a slow decline. Personally, I think PHP is safe for years to come because you can pretty much make anything you need but copy and pasting code that’s already out there.

It’s amazing how many people are as opinionated as web developers. They’ll argue everything from what operating system you should use to what code editor to what language. And after a while you’ll realize that a lot of the time the languages people are declaring dead or dying are the ones they don’t like. I learned a long time ago, it doesn’t matter how you made it, or what you used to make it, if it’s cool and works, then that’s all that matters. In the end, if it’s a project you’re doing on your own to lean or to experiment, then use whatever language you want. But if it’s for a client, make sure you use the best tech for the job. As long as developers are making good apps and sites, I doubt any of the programming languages will ever really die. Look at JavaScript, I’m pretty sure 6 years ago, people were just waiting for it to go away.

Eventually I bought Colin Moock’s Essential ActionScript 3.0 and I worked my way through it from front to back, almost every day. That’s when I made a huge leap from beginner to experienced programmer. Not only because of the information I got from the book, but also from training my brain to think in code. This is how I got to the point where, for the most part, I’m able to start writing the code in my head as soon as I know what I’m going to be building. This is the point I think you can stop considering yourself a beginner, when you don’t have to search Google to figure out where to even start with your code.

This isn’t something that’s ground breaking or just applies to coding. If you want to be a good artist or writer, you have to do it every day. It’s simple and you would think it would be more obvious then it is, but I’m amazed at how many people I talk to that think that you’re either good at coding or you aren’t. That the fact you can’t build an amazing game using ActionScript or JavaScript your first time, then you aren’t ever going to be able to do it. I remember watching Lee Brimelow’s gotoAndLearn tutorials and being amazed at how quickly and simply he was able to code things up. I couldn’t figure out why he was able to do that and I wasn’t. I didn’t realize it was experience and the drive to get better that I needed to get there.

It’s doesn’t have to be something big. Sometimes you can learn more from a quick ten minute coding session then you can from a 6 hour one. Concepts that I’ve struggled to understand, I’ve figured out while messing around on jsbin while watching a baseball game. That’s all you have to do, just pick something you want to learn and mess around for a while. Sometimes I give myself a project, something I haven’t done before, so that I force myself to learn concepts and techniques I haven’t needed yet, but might need in the future.

Code every day. Even if it’s just for 10 minutes. Try something new. Maybe you’re coding at work, but if you’re like me, then you’re not getting the opportunities to do new things as frequently as you would like. And now that I’ve increased my JavaScript and jQuery knowledge on my own time, I’ve been able to suggest things at work to clients because I already have the knowledge to build them.

Download the files.

Start off with a new Flash file. And build this on your stage. The red box can be four instances of the same movie clip. For the document class, put ReSizerControl.

Create a new ActionScript file and use this code as the base for it:

Save this as ReSizerControl.as in the same folder as your .fla file.

What we’re going to do here is make functions to control the resizing when the corners are moused down on. But we’re also going to make it so we can move the black box around the stage which makes it a bit more difficult to set up the resizing functions. I’m going to put most of the explanations in the code, so that if you need to use this later, you’ll still have that info in there. The first thing, we’re going to do is get the bottom right corner to resize the box when you drag it around.

First, inside the constructor function, ReSizerControl(), put this:

Next, below ReSizerControl(), create this function:

Ok, not we have to create the functions, onResizerDown and onResizerUp. They’re going to be pretty similar, one activates the resizing and the other one cancels it.

Now that we have that, we have to create the reSize_br function, but first we need this below the ReSizerControl extends MovieClip and about the ReSizerControl function:

These variables are going to enable us to resize the block’s width and height. Here’s the reSize_br function:

Now if you test it, it should allow you to drag the bottom right red block and resize the block box. Now let’s make the bottom left one work. Add this to the addListeners function:

And this to the bottom of the onResizeDown function:

And this to the bottom of the onResizeUp function:

And here’s our reSize_bl function:

The reSizer_bl function is pretty much the same, just minor differences in how it resizes the black box. Figuring out the differences will really help you understand how this works. Now, let’s get the top two red blocks working. Add this to the onResizeDown function:

And this to the onResizeUp function:

And we need to add these two functions:

And of course, this to the onResizeDown function:

And to the onResizeUp function:

Now add this to the addListeners function:

At this point all the corners should be able to resize the box, but we have one problem, they don’t move if they aren’t the one being clicked on. So we need to add this, just stick it at the bottom of the code:

To use these functions, we need to change our onResizerDown and onResizeUp functions:

Now the red blocks should stay attached to the corner when you’re resizing the block box. Now we have one final thing to do, make it so we can drag the black box around. It’s really simple, add this to the addListeners function:

And then add there two functions at the bottom of the code:

Now you should be able to drag the box around and the red blocks will follow. Because we didn’t use any hard values in the resizing functions, we are able to make the black box dragable, which increase the usefulness of this, if you want to use it as a mask or something similar.

Download the .zip file

To use it, you just need three lines of code:

And you’re good to go. You can use it as many times as you need in your project and it will help keep down your file size.

For me, it’s been different for everything I’ve tried to learn. For HTML/CSS I never had an moment where I just got it, I lucked out and understood what was going on right away. It’s one of those things where I have trouble talking about it and explaining it to people because I’ve never really had to think things through in a way that I would be able to communicate to others. ActionScript, on the other hand, is something I’ve had to put a lot of time into and while I found the beginning stuff not too difficult, when trying to move from simple stuff up to the more interesting and complicated, I found it a struggle sometimes to wrap my heads around some concepts. So what did I do? I kept at it. I looked at as many sources as I could to learn. I bought books by different authors, did as many tutorials as I could, because sometimes things aren’t explained in a way the I really understood. But then, every time I built something, whether for work or just for fun, I learned a little more. And along the way I had a series of small “ah-ha” moments that eventually lead to me being able to build things faster and with more efficient code.

I don’t believe you can force one of these moments but you can set yourself up to have one. A lot of the time when I figure things out, I have them when I’m no where near a computer. I’ll have them when I’m walking to work, thinking about what I’m working on and what I’m going to try to do that day. Sometimes I do a tutorial and one little part of it helps me realize the solution to something that’s been bugging me for weeks.

But beware, that “ah-ha” moment might never come. Sometimes your brain just isn’t wired to figure some stuff out. One thing I really wanted to do, was be able to make great digital art with Photoshop, but after watching a lot of videos and doing a bunch of tutorials, I found myself being constantly amazed by creativity when using some of the filters in Photoshop. No matter how much I tried, I just can’t think like that. And there’s nothing wrong with that, I can do a lot of stuff with Photoshop, but I’ll never be able to make some of the things I wish I could. The key is to find something that you both enjoy working with and are able to do, there’s no sense in beating your head against a brick wall.

So what’s the point of all this? Keep at it and eventually you’ll figure it out, something will click and you’ll look back at your old stuff and wonder what the hell you were thinking! Trust me, that’s actually a good thing.

Here’s what we are going to build:

Start a new Flash file (AS3), mine’s the default – 550×400 with a white background and the framerate at 24. This is about the functionality, not the design, you can add that in after you get the all working. Save it as whatever you want, I called mine TweenSite.fla. Next, using the Text tool (T), type out something like button 1 on the stage. Make sure the button is set to Dynamic Text and the instance name is buttonText. This will allow us to control what the button says in our ActionScript file.

Now turn the text into a movieclip, F8 or Modify > Convert to Symbol. Call it MyButton, set the registration point to the top left and check the Export for ActionScript box.

Delete the MyButton from the stage, we’re going to add it using ActionScript. Finally, one the Document Class field, type Main. This will link our ActionScript file to the .fla. If you don’t know how the document class works, there’s a great video at gotoAndLearn.com.

And that is everything we are going to make in the .fla. Everything else now will be created with ActionScript.

Create a new ActionScript file, File > New… > New ActionScript File. Call it Main and save it in the same folder as your .fla. Instead of writing all the code in the .fla or even in just one .as file, we are going to build this OOP style, to make it easier to customize after it’s been built.

Here’s the code we are going to start with in Main.fla:

If you test this now, you should just be able to see the bottom and right side of our button. This because the position of something added to the stage is automatically 0,0. So just add this under addChild(button1):

This just positions our button the stage. Now to make this work the way we want to, we need more than one button, up with the other variable add this:

What we’re doing here is making three more instances of the same button, but we’ll use our code to change the text. Underneath button.y = 50 add this:

Here we are adding the three other buttons to the stage and positioning them 40 pixels apart. Now if you test it, the buttons will all line up vertically but they all say button 1! So, how do we fix that? At the bottom of the init function add this:

Now if you test the movie, the text should have changed to what we have here. Now as it stands now, our “buttons” don’t really act like buttons. If you mouse over them, you won’t get the hand cursor that tells people that it’s a clickable button. We can fix this a couple of ways. One way would be in our Main.as file to set the buttonMode to true and something called mouseChildren to false for each button, but that would be a lot of code, and if we wanted to change something, like the names of buttons, we would have to change a lot. The simple way to do this is to make a new ActionScript file and put the settings in there. So create a new ActionScript file and save it as MyButton in the same folder as our other files. If you named your button something else, you have to name this file the same as your button because our Main file is going to import these settings and apply them to our buttons. Here’s the entire code for our MyButton.as:

Now if you test the movie, you’ll see that now the hand cursor appears and the text isn’t selectable. This is the main advantage of OOP, with a few lines of code, we have affected our entire navigation. Now, let’s add the gray block to our movie. Create a new ActionScript file and save it as Block.as. Here’s the code for Block:

Now back in Main.as we have some code to add. First add this up with the other variables:

Same as with the buttons, we are creating an instance of our Block class. Next in the init function, at the top, before all the buttons put this:

Now at the bottom of the init function add this:

Now when we test our movie, the block will appear behind the top button. Next we’ll give our block something to do, at the top where we are importing the MovieClip class add this:

This is going to allow us to have mouse events and tween events in our Flash movie. Next with our other variables, add this:

Here we are creating our first tween. Now we need to tell our tween what to do:

I’ve described what the Tween does in comments in the code. Next we need to add some listeners to call this function so it actually does something, what I usually do with listeners is create a function addListeners():

We need to add a listener to each button so that the block knows which button to go to. Inside the Main function add:

Now if you test the movie, you should get this:

OK, now let’s make those buttons control something. What we are going to do is just make four big blocks that slide into view. Once again, we aren’t designing anything we are just building the functionality. The block can be easily replaced with images, movieclips or external .swfs. To do this we are going to make a new ActionScript file and call it ContentBox.as. We’re going to make all the boxes in on class instead of making a separate one for each box. It’s just easier and it’s not too hard to build more custom classes for your own stuff later. Here’s the code for ContentBox:

Really simple stuff here, we’re just creating four boxes that are 345 by 360 and positioning them along the x-axis. I’ve also made each one a different shade of gray that way we can see the boxes move but we won’t blind ourselves with bright colors. Next, up with the variables, put this:

And at the bottom of the inut function, add this:

Same stuff we did with the buttons, so you should know what’s going on here. If you test your movie now, you’ll see the first box and part of the second box, which isn’t really what we want, we just want to see the first box. To do this, we’ll just add a mask to our stage. Make a new ActionScript file and save it as MyMask.as. Here’s the code:

Pretty much the same as our ContentBox class, but with this our mask, the color isn’t going to matter. Now back in our Main.as file, add this code up with the other variables:

And then add this at the end of the init function:

Now if we test this, there’s a red box over top of the first gray box, which I don’t think is quite what we’re going for here. So let’s add this line of code right under the last stuff we added:

Now if we test it, the first gray box is back and we can’t see the other box anymore. Now we have one final thing to do and it’s not that major, we’re just going to apply the Tween code we used on our navigation to the boxes to make them slide into view when a button is clicked. First off, add this to your other variables:

Next we need to add these listeners, which are pretty much the same as the other listeners, they are just calling another function:

Now we have to make the moveContent function:

Here we’re just using if statements to see which button was clicked and then telling contentBox what to change it’s x value to. Now if you test the movie you’ll see contentBox slide to the color that corresponds with the button we clicked on.

I hope this helped you out, this framework should be pretty easy to customize and allow you to build stuff pretty quickly.

1. Learning ActionScript 3.0: A Beginner’s Guide by Rich Shupe and Zevan Rosser

Learning ActionScript 3.0 is a great book for someone just getting started with AS, someone migrating from AS2 to AS3 and even for an experienced Flash designer. It has an easy reading style moves you along at a quick pace. There’s also a great companion website at learningactionscript3.com. I can’t recommend this for an experienced developer because it covers just the basics of ActionScript 3 but it wouldn’t be a bad book to use as a refresher. While it’s a great book to for an introduction to AS3 and Flash, this book isn’t set up to be used as a reference text, it’s really just what it says it is, an introduction to ActionScript. I wish that this book had been out when I was in school, it would have been perfect for my switch to AS3.

2. Essential ActionScript 3.0 by Colin Moock

As the title says, this is pretty much the essential book for any serious ActionScript developer. This book has 946 pages and, from what I can tell, covers every aspect of ActionScript 3. While a beginner could be in over their head, an experienced programmer will find this book to be a great introduction ActionScript 3. Colin Moock has a huge rep in the Flash community and is a great teacher. This book, along with the companion Lost ActionScript Weekend dvds, is a must have for any serious developer or designer the wants to take Flash to the next level.

3. The ActionScript 3.0 Quick Reference Guide by David Stiller, Rich Shupe, Jen deHaan and Darren Richardson

This book is a little different than the other 2 on the list, it’s not really a step by step how to of using Flash and ActionScript. A bit newer than the other books, this one includes info on how to use Flash CS4 and migration from AS2 to AS3. About half the book is a How-To section, including topics like How Do I Work With Events and How Do I Work With XML. This shouldn’t be your first book when trying to learning AS3 but beside the other two it works really well, especially if you need to learn how to do something that you haven’t done before.

There’s a bunch of books out there, but these 3 are the ones that I’ve found helped me the most.

The first thing we are going to do is use the Text Tool (T) to add a dynamic text block to the stage. I put mine in the bottom left, but you can put it anywhere. Make sure that it’s set to dynamic text, not static or input and give it an instance name of scoreTxt. Because it’s dynamic we can change the contents with ActionScript and it’s only going to take a few lines of code to do this. First, we need to add this to the bottom of the other variables:

Next, in the rocketMovement function, right before the closing bracket, add:

This sets the text inside our scoreTxt textfield with the text() method. We’re telling it to display the word Score plus our variable score, whose value we will assign next in our Enemy class. The reason at we are putting this line of code in the rocketMovement function is because we are listening for any changes to score every frame. We could create a new function just to update the score, but since rocketMovement is doing what we want anyway, we can just add it in there.

Now in the Enemy.as file we just have to had one little line of code. Put this in the moveEnemy function:

Now, when the enemy ship is destroyed, the game will add 5 to the score.

The easiest way I’ve found to end the game is to use a Boolean. In the main code, I created a variable called dead, typed it to Boolean and set it to false:

Now go into the Enemy.as file and add this code to moveEnemy function:

I’ve created a moveclip that says Game Over, I named it gameOver and checked the Export for ActionScript box. When an enemy ship hits our rocket, the game will remove all the ships from the stage, move our rocket off of it and add the Game Over movieclip. The reason we are moving the rocket movieclip off the stage instead of removing it is because we put it on the stage in our .fla, if we had added it with addChild() we could remove it easier, but it’s not that big of a deal.

That’s it! Now you should have the basics of a shooter game that you can build on, adding lives and more than one kind of enemy shouldn’t be too hard. I hoped this helped and now I have to figure out what to build next.

This was probably the hardest part of my AS2 game to switch over to AS3, because all the code in AS2 was in the actual .fla. Since the code for both the laser and the enemies were actually on the stage, it wasn’t too hard to make them interact. But since we are making this is in AS3 and the code of the laser and enemy ships are in their own AS files, we have to figure out a way to have the enemy ship code know where the lasers are on the stage. The easiest way to do this is to just add a movie clip to the stage and put the lasers inside it. This way, we can keep track of where the lasers are and how many there are. So, the first thing we have to do is add this code to the top of the main code in your Flash file:

And down where the laser is added to the stage, change it to this:

Alright, that’s all we are going to change in the main .fla. Next, we have one thing to add to Enemy.as, put this in the moveEnemy function:

I commented the code because it’s easier than explaining it here. We just have to make one more change or we’ll get an error. If we left it like this, the laserTaget.removeListeners() line would give us an error. The reason for this is pretty simple, we are trying to access a function in the Laser.as file from the Enemy.as file and that function, removeListeners() is a private function. In order for Enemy.as to access this function, we just need to switch it to public. So in Laser.as, change:

to:

That’s it, now we can shoot the enemies!

In a post that’s not selling you anything, Warm Forest has a nice post called 11 Myths About Flash That Won’t Die. Stuff like You can’t select and copy text on Flash sites and Flash isn’t supported on mobile devices are stuff I hear all the time. It’s a good post to show to your boss at work who never lets you build anything in Flash and ActionScript. Unless, like me, you have 6 months of being annoying to make them see it your way!

Finally, I don’t know why but some software developers just have a hate on for Flash. I’m not saying Flash is perfect and I’m not thrilled that it’s proprietary, but it let’s you do some sweet stuff and it looks and works the same no matter what browser it’s in. But, this guy, OSS Guy, has declared Flash dead and says all Flash developers should stop now and start working in HTML5/CSS3, which of course, means you’re now cutting out anyone that uses any version of IE and considering how well Microsoft has been doing at implementing CSS as it is now, I’m sure they’re going to be right on the bandwagon for CSS3. And it seems to me, a lot of software developers forget that one of the main uses of Flash is animation and if Flash is dead, then Teletoon is screwed when it comes to making their own shows! Plus, does anyone have any tutorials on how I can make HTML5 games? I’d really like to remake Frogger using it.