Writing Scripts with ActionScript > Using code hints |  |

Using code hints

When you work in the Actions panel, Flash can detect what action you are entering and display a code hint—a tooltip containing the complete syntax for that action or a pop-up menu listing possible method or property names. In expert mode, code hints appear for parameters, properties, and events when you enter certain characters in the Script pane. In normal mode, code hints appear for parameters and properties (but not events) in the parameter text boxes when the Expression box is selected.

Code hints are enabled by default. By setting preferences, you can disable code hints or determine how quickly they appear. (See Setting Actions panel preferences.) When code hints are disabled in preferences, you can turn them on manually.

To enable automatic code hints:

1 | Choose Preferences from the Actions panel pop-up menu (at the upper right of the panel).
2 | On the ActionScript Editor tab, select Code Hints.

To enable manual code hints in expert mode, do one of the following:

| Click the Show Code Hint button above the Script pane (at the right side of the Actions panel).
| From the Actions panel pop-up menu (at the upper right of the panel), choose Show Code Hints.
| Press Control+Spacebar.

To work with tooltip-style code hints:

1 | Type an open parenthesis [`(`] after an action name.
| The code hint appears.
2 | Enter a value for the parameter. If there is more than one parameter, separate the values with commas.
| Overloaded functions or methods such as `gotoAndPlay` or `for` (that is, functions or methods that can be invoked with different sets of parameters) display an indicator that allows you to select the parameter you want to set. Click the small arrow buttons or press Control+Left Arrow key and Control+Right Arrow key to select the parameter.
3 | To dismiss the code hint, do one of the following:
| Type a closing parenthesis [`)`].
| Click outside the statement.
| Press Escape.

To work with menu-style code hints:

1 | Display the code hint by doing one of the following:
| Type a dot after the suffix of an object name.
| Type an open parenthesis [`(`] after an event handler name.
2 | To navigate through the code hint, use the Up and Down Arrow keys.
3 | To select an item in the menu, press Return or Tab, or double-click the item.
4 | To dismiss the code hint, do one of the following:
| Choose one of the menu items.
| Click outside the statement.
| Type a closing parenthesis [`)`] if you've already typed an open parenthesis.
| Press Escape.

Many ActionScript objects require you to create a new instance of the object in order to use its methods and properties. For example, in the code `myMovieClip.gotoAndPlay(3)`, the `gotoAndPlay` method tells the instance `myMovieClip` to go to a specific frame and begin playing the movie clip. The Actions panel doesn't know that the instance `myMovieClip` is of the object class MovieClip, and therefore doesn't know which code hints to display.

If you want the Actions panel to display code hints for object instances, you must add a special class suffix to each instance name. For example, to display code hints for the class MovieClip, you must name all MovieClip objects with the suffix `_mc`, as in the following examples:

    Circle_mc.gotoAndPlay(1);
    Sqaure_mc.stop();
    Block_mc.duplicateMovieClip("NewBlock_mc", 100);

The following table shows the suffixes and their corresponding object classes:

Suffix | Object class
`_mc` | MovieClip
`_array` | Array
`_str` | String
`_btn` | Button
`_txt` | TextField
`_fmt` | TextFormat
`_date` | Date
`_sound` | Sound
`_xml` | XML
`_xmlsocket` | XMLSocket
`_color` | Color
`_camera` | Camera
`_mic` | Microphone
`_stream` | NetStream
`_connection` | NetConnection
`_so` | SharedObject
`_video` | Video

You can also use ActionScript comments to specify an object's class for code hinting. The following example tells ActionScript that the class of the instance `theObject` is Object, and so on. If you were to enter the code `mc` after these comments, a code hint would display the list of MovieClip methods and properties; if you were to enter the code `theArray`, a code hint would display a list of Array methods and properties.

    // Object theObject;
    // Array theArray;
    // MovieClip mc;

For more information about object classes in ActionScript, see About object-oriented scripting.