Do you know the difference between _root and _parent? If you are not sure, read this tutorial to find out!
Using these two properties is very important if you want to effectively work in Actionscript.
- _root allows you specify or return a reference to the root Movieclip Timeline.
- _parent allows you specify or return a reference to the Movieclip or object that contains the current Movieclip or object.
This sounds like some pretty difficult stuff, but in fact it's not. Just have a look at this example:
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The question arises: If someone was inside object3, how would he specify a reference to object?
Note: For the sake of simplicity, we assume that all of these Movieclips' instance names are the same—"object".
It is possible to achieve the effect by using either_root or _parent. We are going to change the x property of the object using Actionscript. Let's see how this can be done:
- // _root method
- _root.object._x = 200;
- // _parent method
- _parent._parent.object._x = 200;
As I said, both of these lines will do the job. Nevertheless, the _root method is easier to remember and less likely to make a mistake with.
Let's again analyse what these two properties do:
_parent tells Flash to start reading from one level up. Because in the example object is two levels higher than object3, we must use _parent twice. Whereas _root specifies a reference to the main Timeline. So, you might say that _root is absolute, while _parent is relative.
OK, looks like this is it. Hope this information was helpful. Here you can find more tutorials.
Thanks for reading.
Cheers!
