MACROMEDIA FLASH MX 2004-USING COMPONENTS Use Manual page 429

Form class (Flash Professional only)
The Form class provides the runtime behavior of forms you create in the Screen Outline pane in
Flash MX Professional 2004. For an overview of working with screens, see Chapter 12, "Working
with Screens (Flash Professional Only)," in Using Flash.
Using the Form class (Flash Professional only)
Forms function as containers for graphic objects—user interface elements in an application, for
example—as well as application states. You can use the Screen Outline pane to visualize the
different states of an application that you're creating, where each form is a different application
state. For example, the following illustration shows the Screen Outline pane for an example
application designed using forms.
Screen Outline view of sample form application
This illustration shows the outline for a sample application called Employee Directory, which
consists of several forms. The form named entryForm (selected in the above illustration) contains
several user interface objects, including input text fields, labels, and a push button. The developer
can easily present this form to the user by toggling its visibility (using the
property), while simultaneously toggling the visibility of other forms, as well.
Using the Behaviors panel you can also attach behaviors and controls to forms. For more
information about adding transitions and controls to screens, see "Creating controls and
transitions for screens with behaviors (Flash Professional only)" in Using Flash.
Because the Form class extends the Loader class, you can easily load external content (a SWF or
JPEG file) into a form. For example, the contents of a form could be a separate SWF file, which
itself might contain forms. In this way, you can make your form applications modular, which
makes maintaining the applications easier, and also reduces initial download time. For more
information, see
430 Chapter 6: Components Dictionary
"Loading external content into screens (Flash Professional only)" on page
CHAPTER 6
Components Dictionary
Form.visible
651.