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String is a sequence of characters, and a data type. See “About strings and the String class”
on page 450 for more information.
String literal is a sequence of characters enclosed by straight quote characters. The characters
are themselves a data value, not a reference to data. A string literal is not a String object. For
more information, see “About strings and the String class” on page 450.
Surface is a movie clip that has its bitmap caching flag turned on. For information on bitmap
caching, see “Caching a movie clip” on page 373.
Syntax refers to the grammar and spelling of a language that you program with. The compiler
cannot understand incorrect syntax, so you see errors or warnings displayed in the Output
panel when you try to test the document in the test environment. Therefore, syntax is a
collection of rules and guidelines that help you form correct ActionScript.
Target paths are hierarchical addresses of movie clip instance names, variables, and objects in
a SWF file. You name a movie clip instance in the movie clip Property inspector. (The main
timeline always has the name
_root.) You can use a target path to direct an action at a movie
clip, or to get or set the value of a variable or property. For example, the following statement is
the target path to the
volume property of the object named stereoControl:
stereoControl.volume
Text
is a series of one or more strings that can be displayed in a text field, or within a user
interface component.
Text fields are visual elements on the Stage that let you display text to a user, which you can
create using the Text tool or using ActionScript code. Flash lets you set text fields as editable
(read-only), allow HTML formatting, enable multiline support, password masking, or apply a
CSS style sheet to your HTML formatted text.
Text formatting can be applied to a text field, or certain characters within a text field. Some
examples of text formatting options that can be applied to text are: alignment, indenting,
bold, color, font size, margin widths, italics, and letter spacing.
Top-level functions are functions that don’t belong to a class (sometimes called predefined or
built-in functions), meaning that you can call them without a constructor. Examples of
functions that are built in to the top level of the ActionScript language are
trace() and
setInterval();.
User-defined functions are functions that you create to use in applications, as opposed to
functions in built-in classes that perform predefined functions. You name the functions
yourself and add statements in the function block.
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