0.7 Handling keyboard events

Table of contents

• Preface
  • General
    • Viewing tip
      • Figures
      • Listings
  • Supplemental material
• General background information
• Preview
• Discussion and sample code
  • The MXML code
  • The ActionScript code
• Run the program
• Resources
• Complete program listings
• Miscellaneous

Preface

General

This tutorial lesson is part of a series of lessons dedicated to object-oriented programming (OOP) with ActionScript.

Several ways to create and launch ActionScript programs

There are several ways to create and launch programs written in the ActionScript programming language. Many of the lessons in this series willuse Adobe Flex as the launch pad for the sample ActionScript programs.

An earlier lesson titled The Default Application Container provided information on how to get started programming with Adobe's Flex Builder 3. The lesson titled Using Flex 3 in a Flex 4 World was added later to accommodate the release of Flash Builder 4. (See Baldwin's Flex programming website .) You should study those lessons before embarking on the lessons in this series.

Some understanding of Flex MXML will be required

I also recommend that you study all of the lessons on Baldwin's Flex programming website in parallel with your study of these ActionScript lessons.Eventually you will probably need to understand both ActionScript and Flex and the relationships that exist between them in order to become a successfulActionScript programmer.

Will emphasize ActionScript code

It is often possible to use either ActionScript code or Flex MXML code to achieve the same result. Insofar as this series of lessons is concerned,the emphasis will be on ActionScript code even in those cases where Flex MXML code may be a suitable alternative.

Viewing tip

I recommend that you open another copy of this document in a separate browser window and use the following links to easily find and view the figuresand listings while you are reading about them.

Figures

• Figure 1 . KeyboardEvent02 output at startup.
• Figure 2 . KeyboardEvent02 output after clicking the Canvas and pressing a key.
• Figure 3 . Project file structure for KeyboardEvent02.

Listings

• Listing 1 . Code for the file named Main.mxml.
• Listing 2 . Beginning of the Driver Class.
• Listing 3 . The constructor for the Driver class.
• Listing 4 . The MouseEvent.CLICK listener.
• Listing 5 . The KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN listener.
• Listing 6 . Code for the file named Main.mxml.
• Listing 7 . Source code for the class named Driver.

Supplemental material

I recommend that you also study the other lessons in my extensive collection of online programming tutorials. You will find a consolidated index at www.DickBaldwin.com .

General background information

In the past few lessons, you have learned how to handle mouse events under a variety of circumstances. Up to this point, however, I haven't discussed much ifanything about keyboard events.