Adrian Parr’s Blog

Recently I stumbled across this post by Ryan Creighton at Untold Entertainment from back in October 2008 titled ‘stop(); Action Ignored on Nested Movieclip‘. It basically demonstrates how (in AS3) a child movieclip does not stop on the first frame (even though you have put a stop(); action on it) when it’s parent/container is dynamically attached to the stage.

To me this does seem like a bug. Unless I am missing some subtle difference in this area between AS2 and AS3 that I am missing. If so, please can someone explain it to me?

I’ve knocked up a couple of examples to demonstrate …

Firstly, here is the AS2 version that attaches the container movieclip to the stage using the old attachMovie method. Sure enough, the child movieclip does as it is told and stays on frame 1.

And here is the AS3 version that instantiates the Contaner class and adds it to the display list using addChild. As you can see the child movieclip ignores the stop() command on frame 1 and goes to frame 2 instead. Why?

You can download a ZIP file containing the source files for these two examples here.

More discussion about this issue can be found on actionscript.org, but no-one really explains why this is happening. Any ideas?

HexoSearch - The World’s First Search Engine Dedicated to Actionscript

I know this has been around for quite a long time now, but I had kinda forgotten about it. It is a seach engine that is set-up specifically to search ActionScript related sites for your search term. This can be better than just using Google because it helps filter out all the non-actionscript content for you.

You can also add HexoSearch directly into your browser.

Have you ever wondered what version of the Adobe AIR Runtime you have installed on your computer? Well, if you have then you’ve probably found it difficult to find out. Luckily Jason Madsen has built a simple AIR App that will tell you. It does what it says on the tin. Very handy!

BTW, if you want to know what version of the Flash Player you have installed in your browser just visit www.playerversion.com to find out. Thanks Aral.

Decode: Digital Design Sensations

Victoria and Albert Museum
London, UK
8 December 2009 - 11 April 2010

A new digital art exhibition is on at the V&A in London (in collaboration with onedotzero) called Decode. It is showcasing works from Daniel Brown, Karsten Schmidt (aka Toxi), Aaron Koblin, Golan Levin, Daniel Rozin, Jonathan Harris, Sep Kamvar, Simon Heijdens and Troika. If you are interested in digital art, interactivity, physical computing, installaions, flash, processing, openframeworks or circit bending then I suggest you check it out.

There is also an impressive list of events throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Visit the Decode microsite to find out more information

UPDATE 07/01/10:
Timeout have 2-for-1 tickets
http://www.timeout.com/london/timeout-free-events/tickets/event/id/242