At work I am making a new Flash interface for a project, and my goal this time around was to make as many global functions out of repetitive ones as possible so we could save development time.
As I began writing and testing Prototype class extensions and global functions, I noticed something I had not run into before with flash. If Import classes on one ActionScript layer, and call it on another Actions layer, or even the next frame, it produces an ActionScript error.
At work I work with a lot of local files, and repetitive file groups. Meaning, I might have 30 folders all with the same CSS file or JavaScript file. The trouble I run into with using a lot of the same files is changing them, then having to copy/paste the file a gillion times. It gets really old. (To answer your immediate question as to why I don't just use one file outside of all the folders; I have to send each folder as a separate package to the client because the server they go on handles them as single entities. This however is beside the point of today's post, because you can use this in many situations.)
I work on a corporate network, so i can only install approved programs on my work computer. This keeps me from using my preferred win32 text editor. However, since I work with Flash a lot, I also have DreamWeaver, which is an acceptable text editor in a pinch (as long as you never EVER use the WYSIWYG window).
When working with multiple, nested MovieClips, or dynamic variables, sometimes you need your ActionScript to refer out to other MovieClips, or the main timeline of the swf file. When I was first teaching myself ActionScript, I learned to use _root to reference outside of functions or MovieClips.
It is this point in my learning that see how wrong I was to rely on _root for every outside-the-MovieClip function.
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