What is in the ASAP Framework?

ASAP in a glance. But first you might want to know that ASAP classes are loosely coupled with few dependencies. This makes it easy to pluck a number of classes out of ASAP to use in your own project. Find out in the list below how ASAP classes can help you.

For a complete class list, see: API overview.

Top picks

Because we often create multi-movie projects, these 2 classes are indispensable:

• LocalController: The LocalController functions as controller for everything that happens locally. For other movies, it functions as a Facade, hiding implementation of details.
• MovieManager: handles administration, loading and retrieving of separate SWF movies.

See Movie Management to see how LocalController and MovieManager interact, and Simple Application Demo to see this in action.

Editor's choice

• Loader: loads SWF movies or JPEG images into a clip. Multiple/subsequent movies that are added are queued. This allows to calculate the total size of the stream.
• EventButton: will automatically make the nearest LocalController listen to its events. This is so basic that most ASAP buttons are based on EventButton. See also: Simple Demo.
• ActionQueue: scripted animation and function flow class. ActionQueue stores and runs a series of functions/methods one after the other. You can call local functions, object methods and special movieclip control methods, such as timed "fade", "move" or "pulse" functions. See ActionQueue Demos to see these in action.
  • Special mention: AQZoom, because we have created a special demo: Zoom and Slider Demo.
• SoundManager: provides a single access point to all sounds in a Flash project.
• XMLLoader: to load XML files. More than three simulaneous calls are placed in a queue and loaded sequentially.
• Dispatcher: provides event dispatching capabilities. Very basic, so quite a number of classes extend this base class.

Other goodies

ui

• Disabler: makes stage elements unreceptive for mouse and keyboard events by placing a 'event catching' movieclip on the stage.
• DelayButton: offers timing control over mouse roll over and roll out. The Built with ASAP Demo uses this button so you can skip a few menu titles before any movement takes place.
• DragButton: A button that can be dragged around. Slider is based on it.
• RepeaterButton: to create buttons that keep on firing events while the mouse is down, for example the scrollbar arrow buttons.
• Slider: to create a slider. See also Zoom and Slider Demo.
• HintedInputField: field with an input hint that disappears as soon as text is entered. See Form Validation Demo to see this in action.
• FocusManager: Class to manage focus between various UI elements, without the need of MM's focus manager (which requires elements to be derived from UIComponent class). Again, see Form Validation Demo.

util

• ScrollBar: see Scrollbar Demo
• FLVPlayer: see FLV Player Demo
• ArrayUtils
• BooleanUtils
• ColorUtils
• DateUtils
• MovieClipUtils
• NumberUtils
• ObjectUtils
• PointUtils
• RectangleUtils
• StringUtils
• FrameDelay: call a method after some frames delay to allow Flash ui initialization
• FramePulse: to simulate onEnterFrame events.
• PostCenter: batches getURL messages to send them in one string, so Explorer does not eat them
• Timer: enables the creation of timers that run for a specific number of milliseconds and can optionally run for a specific number of loops.
• Watcher: watch the value of any variable, method or getter function (!). See the horizontal slider with indicator in Zoom and Slider Demo.

util.forms

• EventLoadVars: extends LoadVars to send messages on onData and onLoad.
• Form: to send form data from Flash to a server.
• Validator: checks if its targets contain valid data.

util.types

• Point: copies the interface of the same class in Flash 8, so Point can be used in Flash 7 projects.
• Rectangle: copies the interface of the Rectangle class distributed with Flash 8, to make Rectangle usable for Flash 7 projects.

data

Data handling:

• KeyValueList: creates an ordered list of key value objects.
• Enumerator: enumerators provide a simplified interface for looping over object collections.
• TraverseArrayEnumerator: Enhanced array enumerator, with the option to loop. See Thumb Controller Demo.
• TextFile2Array: creates an array from a simple text file.

event

• NotificationCenter: provides a way for objects that don't know about each other to communicate. Almost complete implementation of Cocoa's NotificationCenter. See the NotificationCenter Demo.

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What's next?

• View all demos
• How to create a new Flash application with the ASAP Framework