Manipulating Components

Throughout this chapter I’ve discussed using ActionScript to interact with MXML components in simple ways: Click this component and this function is called, update the text of a component to some new value, etc. But you can do far, far more than that with your ActionScript. Most of a component’s properties can be altered using ActionScript, meaning that you can do such things as

• Show and hide components by changing their visible status

• Move components by changing their x and y values

• Enable or disable form elements

• Dynamically set the values for lists and menus

• Replace a movie file with another one and much, much more.