Macromedia Flash File Format (SWF)

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Actions

Introduction	Basic Types	Display List	Control Tags
Shapes	(Examples Shapes)	Gradients	Buttons
Sprites	Fonts and Text	Shape Morphing	Bitmap
Sounds	Actions	ActionScripts	Reference

Actions Contents

Actions
Macromedia Flash (SWF) 3 Action Model
The DoAction Tag
ActionRecords
Macromedia Flash (SWF) 4 Action Model
Stack Operations
Arithmetic Operators
Numerical Comparison
Logical Operators
String Manipulation
Type Conversion
Control Flow
Variables
Movie Control
Utilities
Macromedia Flash (SWF) 5 Action Model
ScriptObject Actions
Type Actions
Math Actions
Stack Operator Actions

Actions

Actions are an essential part of an interactive Macromedia Flash movie. Actions allow a movie to react to events such as mouse movements of mouse clicks. Macromedia Flash (SWF) version 3 (and earlier) supports a simple action model. Macromedia Flash (SWF) version 4 supports a greatly enhanced action model including an expression evaluator, variables, and conditional branching and looping. Macromedia Flash (SWF) version 5 adds a JavaScript-style object model, data types and functions. Macromedia Flash (SWF) 3 Action Model

Macromedia Flash (SWF) 3 Action Model

The Macromedia Flash (SWF) version 3 action model consists of eleven simple instructions for the Macromedia Flash Player:

Play – start playing at the current frame.
Stop – stop playing at the current frame.
NextFrame – go to the next frame
PreviousFrame – go to the previous frame
GotoFrame – go to the specified frame
GotoLabel – go to the frame with the specified label
WaitForFrame – wait for the specified frame
GetURL – get the specified URL.
StopSounds – stop all sounds playing
ToggleQuality – toggle the display between high and low quality.
SetTarget – change the context of subsequent actions to a named object.

An action (or list of actions) can be triggered by a button state transition, or by a DoAction tag. The action is not executed immediately, but is added to a list of actions to be processed. The list is executed on a ShowFrame tag, or after the button state has changed. An action can cause other actions to be triggered, in which case, the action is added to the list of actions to be processed. Actions are processed until the action list is empty.

By default, timeline actions such as Stop, Play and GoToFrame apply to movie that contains them. However, the SetTarget action (called ‘Tell Target’ in the Macromedia Flash user-interface) can be used to send an action command to another movie or sprite (see DefineSprite )

There are 127 possible actions of which 91 are currently defined.

The DoAction Tag

The DoAction flag tells the Macromedia Flash player to perform a list of actions when the current frame is complete. The actions are performed when the ShowFrame tag is encountered.

     DoAction

     Field           Type           Comment

     Header           RECORDHEADER           Tag ID = 12

     Actions           ACTIONRECORD[zero or more]           List of actions to perform - see below

     ActionEndFlag           UI8 = 0           Always set to 0

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a DoAction object

new DoAction ( ActionRecord [] actions );

XWF v0.0: how to declare a DoAction tag

<DoAction> <action ... /> <action ... /> ... </DoAction>

ActionRecords

An action record consists of a 1-byte action code. If the high bit of the action code is set, then there is a 16-bit length that describes the amount of data used by the action. If the high bit is clear, the action has no data.

     ActionRecord

     Field           Type           Comment

     ActionCode           code = UI8           An action code as specified below

     Length           If code >= 0x80 UI16           The number of bytes (after this) in the ACTIONRECORD

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a ActionRecord object

all actions below are derived from ActionRecord

ActionGotoFrame

Instructs the player to go to the specified frame in the current movie.

     ActionGotoFrame

     Field           Type           Comment

     ActionCode           UI8           Action = 0x81

     Length           UI16           Always 2

     Frame           UI16           Frame index

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a ActionGotoFrame object

new GotoFrame ( int frame );

XWF v0.0: how to declare a GotoFrame action

<GotoFrame frame="(int)" />

The first frame in the movie has number 0.

ActionGetURL

Instructs the player to get the URL specified by UrlString. The URL can be of any type, including an HTML file, an image or another SWF movie. If the movie is playing in a browser, the URL will be displayed in the frame specified by TargetString. The special target names “_level0” and “_level1” are used to load another SWF movie into levels 0 and 1 respectively.

     ActionGetURL

     Field           Type           Comment

     ActionCode           UI8           Action = 0x83

     Length           UI16           Combined length of strings

     UrlString           STRING           Target URL string

     TargetString           STRING           Target string

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a ActionGetURL object

new GetURL ( String url, String target );

XWF v0.0: how to declare a GetURL action

<GetURL URL="(string)" target="(string)" />

ActionNextFrame

Instructs the player to go to the next frame in the current movie.

     ActionNextFrame

     Field           Type           Comment

     ActionCode           UI8           Action = 0x04

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a ActionNextFrame object

new NextFrame();

XWF v0.0: how to declare a NextFrame action

<NextFrame />

ActionPreviousFrame

Instructs the player to go to the previous frame of the current movie.

     ActionPreviousFrame

     Field           Type           Comment

     ActionCode           UI8           Action = 0x05

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a ActionPreviousFrame object

new PreviousFrame();

XWF v0.0: how to declare a PreviousFrame action

<PreviousFrame />

ActionPlay

Instructs the player to start playing at the current frame.

     ActionPlay

     Field           Type           Comment

     ActionCode           UI8           Action = 0x06

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a ActionPlay object

new Play();

XWF v0.0: how to declare a Play action

<Play />

A simple sequence to use this action is: Insert a DoAction with the Stop action. Define a Button where the action is Play. Place this button on the Display List. Show the current Frame. When the user clicks on the button, it will launch the action Play, so the current frame will continue its play, then movie goes normally to the next frame.
I think the only difference between Play and NextFrame is that Play spends a 1/frameRate^th of a second before the next frame plays.

ActionStop

Instructs the player to stop playing the movie at the current frame.

     ActionStop

     Field           Type           Comment

     ActionCode           UI8           Action = 0x07

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a ActionStop object

new Stop();

XWF v0.0: how to declare a Stop action

<Stop />

If a sequence of actions is Stop, GotoFrame(x), the GotoFrame action is executed without stopping. Why this behaviour?

ActionToggleQuality

Toggle the display between high and low quality.

     ActionToggleQuality

     Field           Type           Comment

     ActionCode           UI8           Action = 0x08

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a ActionToggleQuality object

new ToggleQuality();

XWF v0.0: how to declare a ToggleQuality action

<ToggleQuality />

ActionStopSounds

Instructs the player to stop playing all sounds.

     ActionStopSounds

     Field           Type           Comment

     ActionCode           UI8           Action = 0x09

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a ActionStopSounds object

new StopSounds();

XWF v0.0: how to declare a StopSounds action

<StopSounds />

ActionWaitForFrame

Instructs the player to wait until the specified frame, otherwise skip the specified number of actions.

     ActionWaitForFrame

     Field           Type           Comment

     ActionCode           UI8           Action = 0x8A

     Length           UI16           Always 3

     Frame           UI16           Frame to wait for

     SkipCount           UI8           Number of actions to skip if frame is not loaded

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a ActionWaitForFrame object

new WaitForFrame ( int frame, int skipCount );

XWF v0.0: how to declare a WaitForFrame action

<WaitForFrame frame="(int)" skipCount="(int)" />

ActionSetTarget

Instructs the player to change the context of subsequent actions, so they apply to a named object (TargetName) rather than the current movie.

For example, the SetTarget action can be used to control the timeline of a sprite object. The following sequence of actions sends a sprite called “spinner” to the first frame in its timeline:

SetTarget “spinner”
GotoFrame zero
SetTarget “” (empty string)
End of actions. (Action code = 0)

All actions following SetTarget “spinner” apply to the spinner object until SetTarget “”, which sets the action context back to the current movie. For a complete discussion of target names see DefineSprite .

     ActionSetTarget

     Field           Type           Comment

     ActionCode           UI8           Action = 0x8B

     Length           UI16           Length of record

     TargetName           STRING           Target of action target

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a ActionSetTarget object

new SetTarget ( String target );

XWF v0.0: how to declare a SetTarget action

<SetTarget target="(string)" />

ActionGotoLabel

Instructs the player to go to frame associated with the specified label. A label can be attached to a frame with the FrameLabel tag.

     ActionGotoLabel

     Field           Type           Comment

     ActionCode           UI8           Action = 0x8C

     Length           UI16           Length of record

     Label           STRING           Frame label

SwfJava v0.0: how to create a ActionGotoLabel object

new GotoLabel ( String label );

XWF v0.0: how to declare a GotoLabel action

<GotoLabel label="(string)" />

Macromedia Flash (SWF) 4 Action Model

to be continued…

Macromedia Flash (SWF) 5 Action Model

to be continued…

Introduction	Basic Types	Display List	Control Tags
Shapes	(Examples Shapes)	Gradients	Buttons
Sprites	Fonts and Text	Shape Morphing	Bitmap
Sounds	Actions	ActionScripts	Reference