Multiple Timelines And Levels; Nested Movie Clips - MACROMEDIA FLASH MX 2004-USING FLASH Use Manual

ActionScript is based on the ECMAscript specification (ECMA-262), the international standard
for the ECMAscript programming language. ActionScript offers a subset of ECMAscript's
functionality. For more information about ECMAscript, see the ECMA International website at
www.ecma-international.org.
The popular JavaScript language is rooted in the same standard. For this reason, developers who
are familiar with JavaScript should find ActionScript immediately familiar and have no trouble
learning it quickly.

Multiple Timelines and levels

Flash Player has a stacking order of levels. Every Flash document has a main Timeline located at
level 0 in Flash Player. You can use the
files) into Flash Player at different levels. For more information, see
ActionScript Language Reference.
If you load documents into levels above level 0, the documents stack on top of one another like
drawings on transparent paper; when there is no content on the Stage, you can see through to the
content on lower levels. If you load a document into level 0, it replaces the main Timeline. Each
document loaded into a level of Flash Player has its own Timeline.
When you add a movie clip instance to a document, the movie clip Timeline is nested inside the
main Timeline of the document. You can also nest a movie clip inside another movie clip. For
more information, see
You can use ActionScript to send a message from one Timeline to another. You must use a target
path to specify the location of the Timeline to which you are sending the message. For more
information, see

Nested movie clips

Flash documents can have movie clip instances in their Timelines. Each movie clip instance has
its own Timeline. You can place a movie clip instance inside another movie clip instance.
Note: A movie clip is a type of symbol. For information on adding movie clips to a document, see
Chapter 3, "Using Symbols, Instances, and Library Assets," on page
A movie clip nested inside another movie clip (or inside a document) is a child of that movie clip
or document. Relationships between nested movie clips are hierarchical: modifications made to
the parent will affect the child. You can use ActionScript to send messages between movie clips
and their Timelines. To control a movie clip Timeline from another Timeline, you must specify
the location of the movie clip with a target path. In the Movie Explorer, you can view the
hierarchy of nested movie clips in a document.
You can also use behaviors, which are ActionScript scripts, to control movie clips. For more
information, see
22 Chapter 1: Working with Flash Documents
"Nested movie clips" on page
"Using absolute and relative target paths" on page
"Controlling instances with behaviors" on page
action to load other Flash documents (SWF
loadMovie
22.
in Flash
loadMovie()
23.
53.
65.