Tutorial on how to create a component:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/applications/creating_comps/
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/articles/create_components_4.0.html

Breaking apart bitmap...

What's going on behind the scene?

http://livedocs.macromedia.com/flash/mx2004/main_7_2/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=Flash_MX_2004&file=00000285.html

Changing registration point of an mc

if you already have a simbol.. double clik on it (so you enter it for editing), then choose: Window/Design Panels/align .. click on the "to stage" icon and then select the simbol elemnts and align them as you want..

or highlight the symbol and click F8 (you will end up with a new symbol)

Click symbol on stage and press Ctrl+i (Info pane) which also displays the 9 point registration grid.

http://www.shinstudio.com/blog/2004/01/transformation_position.php

Useful things to know

exclusion_list.xml - specifies which class files you want excluded

mc._lockroot is useful for locking your movieclip's root timeline so it remains the same even after being loaded into another mc.

MovieClipLoader in FlashMX 2004
http://whatdoiknow.org/archives/001238.shtml

Darron has written a lot of good stuff
http://www.darronschall.com

Good article on AJAX

http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php

Site:

http://flashcomponents.net

Project Idea: An MSN chatter that shows two person talking, with contents coming from the XML chat logs. Great for replaying chat logs. ;)

AS 2.0 type checking

If you want to append a property to an object (for example, an XML object) at runtime, you will have to declare that object as an Object instead of XML to turn off the type-checking the AS 2.0 compiler performs.

e.g.

var xmlDoc:XML = new XML();
xmlDoc.property = value; // won't work

var xmlDoc:Object = new XML();
xmlDoc.property = value; // ok

mx.events.EventDispatcher newbie mistake:

Question: If I am using the EventDispatcher class in mx.events, must I always make my class dynamic so it can be assigned the methods?

Answer: You can do the following if you don't want to use dynamic (which is better) so Flash can resolve it at compile time.

private var addEventListnener:Function;
private var removeEventListener:Function;
private var dispatchEvent:Function

Article idea:

Write an article on collision detection

Cool Flash sites:

AS2 compiler: http://tech.motion-twin.com
Open source Flash: http://www.osflash.org
Logging for AS2: http://code.audiofarm.de/Logger

ASSetPropFlags

http://www.actionscript.org/tutorials/intermediate/Using_ASSetPropFlags/index.shtml
http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Flash/Undocumented-ActionScript-Flash-Hack/

Using the Tween and Transition Classes in Flash MX 2004
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/articles/tweening.html

Flash Blogs

http://www.samsamts.com/blog/
http://www.tweenpix.net/archives/000481.html

Project idea:

Create a flash app with two person talking (comic bubbles) and the feed is from MSN's xml file. You create another xml file specifying which xml file you want the app to feed off of.

Should be fun to replay some of the old conversations in Flash.