Adobe® Flash® Professional CS5 components are movie clips with
parameters that allow you to modify their appearance and behavior.
A component can be a simple user interface control, such as a RadioButton
or a CheckBox, or it can contain content, such as a List or DataGrid.
Components allow you to easily and quickly build robust Flash applications with consistent
behavior and appearance. Rather than creating custom buttons, combo
boxes, and lists, you can use the Flash components that implement
these controls. Simply drag them from the Components panel into your
application document. You can also easily customize the look and
feel of these components to suit your application design.
While you can do all of this without
an advanced understanding of ActionScript, you can also use ActionScript
3.0 to modify a component’s behavior or implement new behavior.
Each component has a unique set of ActionScript methods, properties,
and events that make up its
application programming interface
(API).
The API allows you to create and manipulate components while the
application is running.
The
API also allows you to create new, custom components of your own.
You can download components built by members of the Flash community
on the Adobe Exchange at
www.adobe.com/go/flash_exchange
.
The ActionScript 3.0 component architecture includes classes
on which all components are based, skins and styles that allow you
to customize appearance, an event-handling model, focus management,
an accessibility interface, and more.
Note:
Adobe Flash CS5 includes ActionScript 2.0 components
as well as ActionScript 3.0 components. You cannot mix these two
sets of components. You must use one set or the other for a given
application. Flash CS5 presents either ActionScript 2.0 components
or ActionScript 3.0 components based on whether you open an ActionScript 2.0
or an ActionScript 3.0 file. When you create a new Flash document,
you must specify either Flash File (ActionScript 3.0) or Flash File
(ActionScript 2.0). When you open an existing document, Flash examines
the Publish Settings to determine which set of components to use.
For information about ActionScript 2.0 components, see Using Adobe® ActionScript® 2.0
Components.
For a complete list of the Flash ActionScript 3.0 components,
see
Component types
.
