Why Short?

While we all like AS3 for consistency, better performance and OOP, many of us hate it for its verbose nature. If you share this view, then you will find Short helpful in your day-to-day development tasks, be it an agency interactive or a complex application. Short attempts to reduce the verboseness of the language.

What it provides?

It provides few global objects and methods as shown below, | Name | Purpose | |:---------|:------------| | _ | root of event handling simplification. once we set the target using _.to=myMovieClip syntax, we can use _.onClick instead of myMovieClip.addEventListener(...) to handle events. it is a global instance of com.luracast.Short | | $(target) | alternative syntax for getting the short version of the target. Use $(myMovieClip).onClick=function(){} syntax, instead of myMovieClip.addEventListener(...) to handle events. it is a global function to call com.luracast.Short.getShort(target) | | _.loadChild(...) or $(target).loadChild(...) | convenience method to load an image/swf into our movie. | | _.loadingChild or $(target).loadingChild() | convenience property to refer to the Loader. | | _.listeners or $(target).listeners | list of active listeners on the current target. | | _.listAllEvents() or $(target).listAllEvents() | lists the events supported by the current target object. | | _.listErrorEvents() or $(target).listErrorEvents() | lists the error events supported by the current target. | | _.removeListeners() or $(target).removeListeners() | helper method to remove all events added through the onEventName syntax | | _global | a global object to add properties and methods that you want to access from every where | | getURL() |a global method to load a document from a specific URL into a window or pass variables to another application at a defined URL. Shorthand for navigateToURL. | | com.luracast.Short |A stand-in object to simplify event handling with onEventName syntax. It also adds convenience methods to the objects it stands-in for |

How to use it?

Its a simple 3 step process 1. download Short.swc from the downloads section 1. add it to your library path 1. start using it :)

Here is an example that shows most of the use cases //the one and only import statement! import flash.events.ProgressEvent; //on the root timeline _.to=this; _.loadChild("http://www.helpexamples.com/flash/images/image1.jpg").onComplete=function():void { with (this.content) { trace(this, 'width', width, 'height', height); //traces [short Loader] width 400 height 267 y=100; width=100 height=66; } this.onceEnterFrame=function():void { trace('enterframe once'); } this.onClick=function():void { getURL("http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/flashpro/", "_blank"); //manually remove event listener delete this.onClick; } }

Short is not just for Sprites and MovieClips, it will work on any target that is capable of dispatching events

This example shows how we can use the $(target) syntax, nested functions to create a simple http client using `flash.net.Socket' ``` import flash.net.Socket; import flash.events.Event;

function socketResponse(onResult:Function, onError:Function, host:String, page:String = '', port:int = 80):void { var s:Object = $(new Socket(host, port)); trace(s.listErrorEvents()); //traces onIoError,onSecurityError trace(s.listAllEvents()); //traces onClose,onConnect,onIoError,onSecurityError,onSocketData var result:String = ''; s.onIoError = s.onSecurityError = function(e:Event):void { e.preventDefault(); //delete this.onceConnect, s.onIoError, s.onSecurityError; this.removeListeners(); onError(e); } s.onceConnect = function():void { this.writeUTFBytes("GET /" + page + "\n"); this.onSocketData = function():void { result += this.readUTFBytes(this.bytesAvailable) }

    this.onceClose = function():void {
        //delete this.onSocketData, this.onceIoError, s.onSecurityError;
        this.removeListeners();
        onResult(result);
    }
}

trace('listeners', s.listeners); //traces listeners onIoError,onceConnect,onSecurityError } //Use the socket response function to trace the response from google.com socketResponse(trace, trace, 'google.com'); //socketResponse(trace, trace, 'localhost);

```

For more information refer to the API-Documentation link provided in the side bar