« Flash: Inaccuracies in the _alpha property
Flash: Using CSS »


Flash: Depth Control

April 28th, 2005 by Luis

Maybe is old news but I didn't know about it. Basically I found the mx.behaviors.DepthControl in one of the example files provided with MX Pro.

It is a class that provides you with some static functions for depth sorting and depth information.

Classpath: mx.behaviors.DepthControl

Class methods:

  • sendToBack
  • bringToFront
  • sendBackward
  • bringForward
  • trackDepths
  • orderFunc
  • getInstanceAtLowest
  • getInstanceAtHighest
  • getInstanceLowerThan
  • getInstanceHigherThan

See some documentation here

More about Depths in Flash:

Small DepthManager Utility to use when you export as Flash 6:

PLAIN TEXT
Actionscript:
  1. /**
  2. ******************************************
  4. * based on <a href="http://proto.layer51.com/d.aspx?f=833">Fernando Flórez</a> getNextDepth  AS1 prototype
  6. @class (SINGLETON): DepthManager
  8. @author: luis@lessrain.com
  10. PUBLIC METHODS
  11. getNextDepth
  12. getInstance
  14. @usage:
  16. var dm:DepthManager = DepthManager.getInstance ();
  17. createEmptyMovieClip ("one", 2);
  18. createEmptyMovieClip ("two", dm.getNextDepth (this));
  19. trace ("the next free depth is: " + dm.getNextDepth (this));
  21. ******************************************
  22. */
  23.  
  24. class DepthManager
  25. {
  26.     private static var _oInstance:DepthManager = null;
  27.    
  28.     private function DepthManager ()
  29.     {
  30.     }
  31.    
  32.     public static function getInstance ():DepthManager
  33.     {
  34.         if (_oInstance == null) {
  35.             DepthManager._oInstance = new DepthManager ();
  36.         }
  37.         return DepthManager._oInstance;
  38.     }
  39.    
  40.     public function getNextDepth (mClip:MovieClip):Number
  41.     {
  42.         var t:Number = -Infinity;
  43.         var i:Number;
  44.         for (var i in mClip) {
  45.             if (mClip[i].getDepth () != null && mClip[i]._parent == mClip) {
  46.                 t = Math.max (t, mClip[i].getDepth ());
  47.             }
  48.         }
  49.         return (t> -1) ? ++t : 0;
  50.     }
  51.    
  52. }


NOTE:If you export the movie as flash 7 there is not need of the DepthManager utility , you can simply use the built in movieclip method getNextHighestDepth().

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 28th, 2005 at 9:29 pm and is filed under AS2, Flash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Flash: Depth Control”

  1. Ruchira Says:
    April 8th, 2006 at 11:21 pm

    you are saying (then in april 2005) that you didnt know this!!
    i came across this feature in flash 8, and today only i found this behavior class, sad that it is not listed in the standard classes.
    thanks to you to list some methods here…

Leave a Reply