MACROMEDIA FLASH MX 2004 - ACTIONSCRIPT - Page 93

Controlling SWF file playback 93
This same on() event handler code will produce a different result when attached to a movie clip
object rather than a button. When attached to a button object, statements made within an
on()
handler are applied to the Timeline that contains the button, by default. However, when attached
to a movie clip object, statements made within an
on() handler are applied to the movie clip to
which the
on() handler is attached.
For example, the following
on() handler code stops the Timeline of the movie clip to which the
handler is attached, not the Timeline that contains the movie clip.
on(press) {
stop();
}
The same conditions apply to onClipEvent() handlers attached to movie clip objects. For
instance, the following code stops the Timeline of the movie clip that bears the
onClipEvent()
handler when the clip first loads or appears on the Stage.
onClipEvent(load) {
stop();
}
Jumping to a different URL
To open a web page in a browser window, or to pass data to another application at a defined URL,
you can use the
getURL() global function or the MovieClip.getURL() method. For example,
you can have a button that links to a new website, or you can send Timeline variables to a CGI
script for processing in the same way as you would an HTML form. You can also specify a target
window, just as you would when targeting a window with an HTML anchor (
<a></a>) tag.
For example, the following code opens the macromedia.com home page in a blank browser
window when the user clicks the button instance named
homepage_btn.
homepage_btn.onRelease = function () {
getURL("http://www.macromedia.com", _blank);
}
You can also send variables along with the URL, using GET or POST. This is useful if the page you
are loading from an application server, like a ColdFusion Server (CFM) page, expects to receive
form variables. For example, suppose you want to load a CFM page named addUser.cfm that
expects two form variables,
name and age. To do this, you could create a movie clip named
variables_mc that defines those two variables, as shown below.
variables_mc.name = "Francois";
variables_mc.age = 32;
The following code then loads addUser.cfm into a blank browser window and passes to the CFM
page
variables_mc.name and variables_mc.age in the POST header.
variables_mc.getURL("addUser.cfm", "_blank", "POST");
For more information, see getURL() on page 394.