Editor’s review:

Very short Flash tutorial that shows how to have the systems date and time display in Flash. Not the easiest Flash tutorial to follow, and it’s definitely lacking on explanation, but if you are looking to have the date and time display in your Flash projects, this is a great way to do it.

Note: if you are using copy/paste, all the quotes use smartquotes (can be aggravating for beginners), so you will need to swap in regular quotes. Also, there is a typo where it reads month[datedispay.getMonth()]. It is missing an “l” in display, should read: month[datedisplay.getMonth()].

View Tutorial: Flash Tutorial: Adding time/date stamp in Flash

Additional Info
Version: All
ActionScript: 2.0
Online example: No
Source files available: No
Video Tutorial: No

Editor’s review:

A lot of people use Flash’s hitTest() method for setting up collisions between 2 symbols, which is great, except when using on circles, hit test takes the outer dimensions of the entire symbol (a square), so it’s not an exact collision. This short Flash tutorial describes how to set up collisions of 2 circles where the collision is the curve lines of the circles rather than the symbol area. Pretty neat!

Also, nice explanation of the code accompanied by a short trigonometry lesson. But don’t worry, you don’t need to know trigonometry to complete this tutorial, it just helps explain what the code is doing.

ActionScript 2.0 and ActionScript 3.0 code is provided, although I couldn’t get the ActionScript 3.0 code to work correctly. Also, be careful when doing a copy/paste, as the AS2.0 code uses the HTML code for the less than symbol (“&lt;” vs “<”) on line 10. User will need to swap in the less than symbol if doing a copy and paste. Otherwise, the AS 2.0 code worked great!

View Tutorial: Flash Tutorial: Circle Collisons

Additional Info
Version: All
ActionScript: 2.0 and 3.0 code provided (note: editor could not get 3.0 code to work properly)
Online example: Yes
Source files available: No
Video Tutorial: No

Editor’s review:

Nice, easy to follow tutorial that shows how to display the mouses x and y position of the mouse as the user moves the pointer around the Flash stage. Provides 2 variations of simple ActionScript code to accomplish the same task.

Author’s Quote:

This Flash tutorial will teach you how to display the x and y position of the mouse, so when you move your mouse on the stage it keeps track of the position and updates as you move. This tutorial uses the _xmouse and _ymouse properties to return the x and y coordinates of the mouse position.

This tutorial also gives a brief intro to the use of dynamic text in Flash, which is needed in order for the actual coordinates to display as the mouse moves around on the stage. A great tutorial for newbies to Flash and ActionScript 2.0.

View Tutorial: Displaying Position of Mouse in Flash

Additional Info
Version: All
ActionScript: 2.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: No
Video Tutorial: No

Editor’s Review:

This tutorial has not yet been reviewed. Please feel free to add your own review in the comments below.

Authors quote:

Using this lesson, you will see how to create star flash preloader using the action script code. To make this lesson, we have to use mask in flash.

View Tutorial: Star Flash Preloader

Additional Info
Level: Intermediate
Version: Flash 5 and up
ActionScript: 2.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: Yes
Video Tutorial: No

Editor’s Review:

Short, easy tutorial to show how to move a movie clip with the mouse in Flash. Also talks briefly about the how to detect when a clip touches another clip using the hitTest() method in Flash. While this tutorial isn’t meant to show you how to create or draw the clips used for the example, the way it explains how to set up the clips is a little confusing. However, if you know enough about Flash to draw and create symbols, then this is an easy tutorial to show you how to add a little interactivity to your Flash projects. One important note about hitTest (aka collision detection). The “hit” area is the bounding box of your symbol. So, in the case of this tutorial, the hitTest applies even when VISUALLY the objects are not touching (since the tutorial uses circular shapes as it’s symbols). While the tutorial is still relevant, and is still a good lesson on hitTest, I think its important to point that out to avoid users thinking they might have made a mistake

View Tutorial: Interactivity in Flash using hitTest() method

Additional Info
Level: Beginner
Version: 5 and up
ActionScript: 2.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: No
Video Tutorial: No

View Tutorial: Mouse Dragging

Editor’s Review:

Very short, easy to follow Flash tutorial to create a neat little animation of circles that follow the users mouse as it moves around the Flash stage. Well written with commented code so it’s easy to follow along.

One note is the first step says:

First create two Movie Clip; one is for the smaller circle you can see above and the other for the rest of the circles.

Not sure why you need 2 movie clips… I just used one and changed the size of each one on the stage using the Transform Pallette. Either way, it’s still a short tutorial with a nice effect and leaves a lot of room for user experimentation to create more advanced mouse-trail effects.

Additional Info
Level: Beginner
Version: 5 and up
ActionScript: 2.0
Online example: Yes
Source files available: Yes
Video Tutorial: No