What's New in Flash Player 11

MovieClip.isPlaying

It’s actually sort of amazing that we haven’t had this property in older versions of Flash Player. MovieClip instances are unique in that they contain their own timeline, independent from the main timeline. Often, a developer will want to know whether or not a specific MovieClip instance is actually playing or not, and this has traditionally involved monitoring the current frame of the MovieClip to determine whether or not it is changing over time.

Making use of this new functionality is very direct, as MovieClip.isPlaying is simply a property of every MovieClip instance, which, when invoked, returns a Boolean value of true for playing and false for stopped. In the following example; we create a MovieClip, add it to the DisplayList, and then write the isPlaying property out onto a TextField.

package {
    import flash.display.MovieClip;
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.events.Event;
    import flash.events.MouseEvent;
    import flash.text.TextField;
    import flash.text.TextFormat;

    [SWF(width="600", height="500", backgroundColor="#CCCCCC")]

    public class CheckPlaying extends Sprite {

        private var face:MovieClip;
        private var traceField:TextField;

        public function CheckPlaying() {
            generateDisplayObjects();
        }

        protected function generateDisplayObjects():void {
            face = new AngryFace() as MovieClip;
            face.x = stage.stageWidth/2;
            face.y = stage.stageHeight/2;
            face.stop();
            face.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, toggleFacePlaying);
            addChild(face);

            var defaultFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
            defaultFormat.font = "Arial";
            defaultFormat.size = 26;
            defaultFormat.color = 0xFFFFFF;

            traceField = new TextField();
            traceField.backgroundColor = 0x000000;
            traceField.alpha = 0.7;
            traceField.autoSize = "left";
            traceField.background = true;
            traceField.defaultTextFormat = defaultFormat;
            addChild(traceField);

            stage.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, checkPlaying);
        }

        protected function toggleFacePlaying(e:MouseEvent):void {
            if(face.isPlaying){
                face.stop();
            }else{
                face.play();
            }
        }

        protected function checkPlaying(e:Event):void {
            traceField.text = "MovieClip is playing? => " + face.isPlaying;
        }
    }
}

Figure 1-4. MovieClip.isPlaying

The result of this code can be seen fully rendered in Figure 1-5. When clicking upon the MovieClip, its playback is toggled, and the isPlaying Boolean is measured and written onto the screen.

Figure 1-5. Export SWC from Flash Professional

Note

Note that in this example, we are employing a MovieClip object that was animated in Flash Professional CS5.5, exported as part of a SWC, and linked into Flash Builder 4.5. There are other ways of doing this, but this method is very direct if you are not working within Flash Professional already.