PROBLEM: Unloading content (ie external swfs) in AS3 is difficult, if not impossible. SOLUTION: My pal Martin Sieg at marblemedia threw me to an article by Grant Skinner – Failure to Unload: Flash Player 9′s Dirty Secret – where the author discusses a player bug that prevents content unloading. The problem impacts gallery-style projects, and [...] Keep Reading

PROBLEM: When i test my movie, it doesn’t respond to all of the keyboard key presses. Only some keys register. OR Certain text characters do not show up in my Input text field when i type them, even though my font outlines are embedded. SOLUTION: In the Test Movie window (NOT the Flash IDE window), [...] Keep Reading

PROBLEM: MovieClip._xscale (or MovieClip.xscale) does not light up as a recognized property in AS3. It’s not even listed as a property of the MovieClip class in the documentation. What gives? SOLUTION: _xscale and _yscale properties have been replaced by scaleX and scaleY, which are both properties of the DisplayObject class. MovieClip (eventually) extends DisplayObject and [...] Keep Reading

PROBLEM: TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference. SOLUTION: i don’t know. Error #1009 seems to be catch-all error that Flash throws whenever you reference something that doesn’t “exist”, or hasn’t been loaded into memory. A quick Google search shows that the error spans both Flash and Flex, [...] Keep Reading

PROBLEM: Bolded or italicized text doesn’t appear in my dynamic text box, even though i’ve included the font outlines. SOLUTION: This is a pitfall that’s existed in many versions of Flash, and it doesn’t necessarily have to do with your code. Flash treats bolded and italicized letters as separate outlines. If you have a a [...] Keep Reading