Flash Timeline
Advanced Timeline controll
To
specify a target path manually do the following:
- Select the movie clip, frame, or button instance to which you want to assign the action. This becomes the controlling Timeline.
- In the Actions panel (Window > Actions), go to the Actions toolbox on the left, and select an action or method that requires a target path.
- Click the parameter box or location in the script where you want to insert the target path.
- Enter an absolute or relative target path in the Actions panel.
Use an
expression as a target path- Select the movie clip, frame, or button instance to which you want to assign the action. This becomes the controlling Timeline.
- In the Actions panel (Window > Actions), go to the Actions toolbox on the left, and select an action or method that requires a target path.
- Do one of the following:
- Enter an expression that evaluates to a target path in a parameter box.
- Click to place the insertion point in the script. Then, in the Functions category of the Actions toolbox, doubleclick the targetPath function. The targetPath function converts a reference to a movie clip into a string.
- Click to place the insertion point in the script. Then, in the Functions category of the Actions toolbox, select the eval function. The eval function converts a string to a movie clip reference that can be used to call methods such as play.
The following script assigns the value 1 to the variable i. It then uses the eval function to create a reference to a movie clip instance and assigns it to the variable x. The variable x is now a reference to a movie clip instance and can call the MovieClip object methods.
i = 1;
x = eval("mc"+i);
x.play();
// this is equivalent to mc1.play();
You can also use the eval function to call methods directly, as shown in the following example:
eval("mc" + i).play();
