What are Components?

Components are complex Movie Clips with parameters that you define during the authoring process. They are essentially a container, holding many assets that work together to add enhanced interactivity, productivity, or effects to your movies. You can use components to control your movie, such as moving from one frame to another, or to perform more complex tasks, such as sending data to and from a server.

You can download additional components from Macromedia and third-party developers to add to those already bundled with Flash 8, though many of the most useful and regularly used elements, such as buttons, combo boxes, and lists, are already included with the program. We look at many of the components found in the User Interface components set in this chapter.

Different Flash MX Components

You may already be familiar with the use of Flash MX's components. The original components are now referred to as V1 components. V1 components use a different event model than the V2 components that shipped with Flash MX 2004 and Flash 8.

If you have a large investment in V1 components, you can continue using them in Flash 8 documents, but you will be restricted to publishing ActionScript 1.0 movies. You may also find that you need to publish your movies for Flash Player 6 as well. To reuse your V1 components from Flash MX in Flash 8, do the following:

1. Copy the Flash document (.fla) for the component set (for example, the Communication Components.fla for the Flash Communication Server MX 1.5 components) from the Flash MX First Run\Components directory to your Flash MX 2004 First Run\Components folder.

2. Restart Flash 8, or reload the Components panel by right-clicking (Control+clicking on Mac) the Components panel title bar and choosing Reload. The older components should appear in the Components panel.

You can also download the free Flash MX UI Components for Flash MX 2004 extension from Macromedia's site. This updater installs all of the older V1 components from Flash MX into Flash MX 2004 or Flash 8. You can find the link to this updater in the Flash Extensions section of the www.flashsupport.com/links page. One of the benefits of the V1 components is that they add much less weight, in terms of file size, to your final Flash movie (.swf).