ACTIONSCRIPT 3 Developer’s Guide en

ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0 DEVELOPER’S GUIDE
Display programming
Core display classes
Flash Player 9 and later, Adobe AIR 1.0 and later
The ActionScript 3.0 flash.display package includes classes for visual objects that can appear in Flash Player or AIR.
The following illustration shows the subclass relationships of these core display object classes.
AVM1Movie Bitmap InteractiveObject MorphShape Shape StaticText Video
Loader
DisplayObject
DisplayObjectContainer SimpleButton TextField
Sprite
MovieClip
Stage
The illustration shows the class inheritance of display object classes. Note that some of these classes, specifically
StaticText, TextField, and Video, are not in the flash.display package, but they still inherit from the DisplayObject class.
All classes that extend the DisplayObject class inherit its methods and properties. For more information, see
“Properties and methods of the DisplayObject class” on page 158.
You can instantiate objects of the following classes contained in the flash.display package:
Bitmap—You use the Bitmap class to define bitmap objects, either loaded from external files or rendered through
ActionScript. You can load bitmaps from external files through the Loader class. You can load GIF, JPG, or PNG
files. You can also create a BitmapData object with custom data and then create a Bitmap object that uses that data.
You can use the methods of the BitmapData class to alter bitmaps, whether they are loaded or created in
ActionScript. For more information, see “Loading display objects” on page 198 and “Working with bitmaps” on
page 242.
Loader—You use the Loader class to load external assets (either SWF files or graphics). For more information, see
“Loading display content dynamically” on page 198.
Shape—You use the Shape class to create vector graphics, such as rectangles, lines, circles, and so on. For more
information, see “Using the drawing API” on page 221.
SimpleButton—A SimpleButton object is the ActionScript representation of a button symbol created in the Flash
authoring tool. A SimpleButton instance has four button states: up, down, over, and hit test (the area that responds
to mouse and keyboard events).
Sprite—A Sprite object can contain graphics of its own, and it can contain child display objects. (The Sprite class
extends the DisplayObjectContainer class). For more information, see “Working with display object containers” on
page 159 and “Using the drawing API” on page 221.
Last updated 6/6/2012
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