So imagine this. Lets say that we have class A which creates an instance of class B. Now lets say when want to store an instance of class A in class B so that you can call class A methods. For smaller apps this is can be an acceptable code structure. So how do you pass an instance of a class in that same class? You guessed it. this!

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class A 
{
	private var b:B;
 
	public function A()
	{
		b = new B(); //Creates instance of B class
		b.a = this; //this passes a reference of class A
		//to class B.  Now class B can call class A's
		//myCoolFunction.
	}
 
	public function myCoolFunction():Void
	{
		//Magic happens here. :)
	}
}

If you have any other handy uses for this (I’m sure there are), please let me know in the comments.

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public var age:Number;
 
public function myClass(age:Number)
{
   if(age > 0)
      this.age = age;
}

So lets say this is a class (myClass) with a public variable age. In actionscript you can declare local variables and parameters that only exist for the duration of the function. These local variables have the smallest scope, but have the highest preference, meaning if another variable is named the same the local variable, the local variable will be used instead of the class variable. In the above example we have a constructor the class myClass. Can you see were I am going with this? In the above constructor we have two age variables! The parameter is defined in the function. So to set the class variable we need to use ‘this’ to specify between the local variable and the class variable.

This example is the only the real time that you need to use ‘this’, of course this is only my opinion. What do you think? Coding vets how do you feel about ‘this’?

The Float class was one of the very first classes that I wrote on my own. Pretty much after I got done reading a book about OOP in AS2, I started this class.  Looking back now, it was pretty rough.  To add in the interactivity and to port the class over to AS3, I pretty much gutted the whole thing and started new, but it is neat to see that I have come a long way in such a short time.

Now the seeds are in a new Dandelion class that extends Float. Float contains a wind object which is shared among the other instances of dandelion seeds (kind of like a singleton, not really fond of them personally, but that is a different post).  After that is was simple to add in the required mouse detection class and update the wind velocity based on the mouse position.

Future:

There are still a few bugs left, if you are in FireFox switch to another tab and then come back.  Also I want to enforce the wind velocities a little better in case the mouse position is too extreme.  To enhance it I want to make it 3D by splitting the picture into layers and having the seeds go between the tree.  The 3d would also have the smaller seeds be removed from the stage earlier to make it look like it landed in the background of the image.

Download Source [300K]

Browse my Classes

Licensed under Creative Commons, so feel free to use them in your project and if you do please let me know.

I would have never guessed the popularity of theses cartoons in the schools. To me I was just messing around try to make the knight’s lips sync with the audio. Despite my novice everyone wanted more, and so a got some great help from Josh Latta a great cartoonist to help me out on the videos.

And the weapon of choice for animating the cartoons….none other than Flash. At the time I didn’t know better but there is better animation software out there. I finally wised up and bought Preimer Pro and After Effects about a year into the job, but none the less it was and still is a great tool to create simple animations.

Below are some samples of my work. Head on over to KidChess.com to see more.