Creating Interaction with ActionScript > Creating interaction overview |  |

Creating interaction overview

In simple animation, Macromedia Flash MX plays the scenes and frames of a movie sequentially. In an interactive movie, your audience uses the keyboard and mouse to jump to different parts of a movie, move objects, enter information in forms, and perform many other interactive operations.

You use ActionScript to create scripts that tell Flash what action to perform when an event occurs. Some events that can trigger a script occur when the playhead reaches a frame, when a movie clip loads or unloads, or when the user clicks a button or presses keys on the keyboard.

Scripts can consist of a single action, such as instructing a movie to stop playing, or a series of actions, such as first evaluating a condition and then performing an action. Many actions are simple and let you create basic controls for a movie. Other actions require some familiarity with programming languages and are intended for advanced development.