It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. It has been argued that annoyance, not necessity, fuels invention.
I'd like to start the year off with a little script brought to life by annoyance. To set the position of a MovieClip, you need two lines of code: one to set the _x position, and another to set the _y position. Many times I found myself wishing for a way to set a MovieClip's coordinates in one line. Enter the "_location" property. Use the code below to add the _location property to all of your MovieClips.
// pt is an object with an x and a y property
function $setLocation(pt) {
this._x = pt.x;
this._y = pt.y;
}
function $getLocation() {
return {x:this._x, y:this._y};
}
MovieClip.prototype.addProperty("_location", $getLocation, $setLocation);
// constants for ASSetPropFlags
var HIDDEN:Number = 1;
var PROTECT_DELETE:Number = 2;
var PROTECT_OVERWRITE:Number = 4;
ASSetPropFlags(MovieClip.prototype,"_location",
HIDDEN | PROTECT_DELETE | PROTECT_OVERWRITE, 0);
Usage is simple - you can just write..
my_mc._location = {x:20, y:40};
.. and the MovieClip will adjust it's x and y positions.
Happy New Year Everyone!
4 Comments
I have to say, I'm a pretty big fan of the new V2 components' "move" method, which takes two parameters (eg: mc.move(x,y); ). But retrieval of properties is still two lines.
How about using an array of size two, [x,y] ? That should save you some keystrokes ;)
I know, I know, everyone's a critic. Happy New Year.
Posted by: Wes Carr | January 2, 2004 2:24 PM
Kudos Darron !!!
Great work !!!
-Pandu
P.S. But this time, you are the father of the invention in regards to this context. :) (Just kidding)
Posted by: Pandu | January 6, 2004 2:28 AM
lol
my_mc._y = 40;
my_mc._x = 20;
is actually 3 characters less than
my_mc._location = {x:20, y:40};
:-)
Posted by: Peter Hall | January 16, 2004 9:34 PM
Actually Peter, the _location property is really useful with a Point2D class that I didn't share.
my_mc._location = new Point2D(20,40);
And we can even shorten that to _loc to save some typing. It should be about as readable since loc is a common abbreviation.
The Point2D class I'm using is basically just a port of the Java Point2D class: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/awt/geom/Point2D.html
Since I was using Java before I was introduced to Flash, I recreated some Java classes that I found useful.. and by making the _location property I'm easily able to use a Point as the coords for a clip.
Posted by: darron | January 16, 2004 10:27 PM