Expanding knowledge in AS3 - set me mini-tasks!

[sleazy_elfranko]

Hi all - I'm finding learning AS3 very frustrating - I learn by example; I have umpteen books on my desk (moock, lott, shupe, peters, noble, anderson etc etc) and they are all great except I find it hard to apply the knowledge the book has taught me, which gets confusing and frustrating.

As I said I learn by example. Would it be possible for members of this community to set micro-programming tasks just off the top of their head? Setting a small example helps focus the mind and aids in learning in that you have a task, a goal, to reach and apply the as3 to rather than "Ooh, addChild(_myBox), great, a red box on the stage, next chapter please."

A caveat: please make them simple; small bite sized learning tasks; please feel free to post anything that you think I and others who are learning AS3 may feel able to take up and build; learning is about taking small baby steps at first. Hopefully this thread may become a great list for relatively new or learning in new areas as3 coders to learn new things.

cheers
frank

[5TonsOfFlax]

I think this is a great idea. Let's see how it works out.
One of the very basic building blocks is to instantiate an item from your library on the displaylist. Since you've already got that far, let's add some interactivity.
Task 1: Make a MovieClip or Sprite library item. Instantiate it and place on stage, then add interactivity by making it rotate 45 degrees with each mouse click.

[florianvanthuyn]

Whow, this is realy a cool way to learn AS3 step by step! I'll keep an eye on this thread to see if I can participate in giving you some work ^^

[sleazy_elfranko]

Actually I hadn't thought about the format of how or if to show off finished results - obviously "miniproject" setters will want to see the results of their question and offer hints and tips on inprovements in the code. I don't know how practical a "show n tell" will be on the board - perhaps trainees should restrict themselves to posting results and code to their own blog and posting a link to that? Also could task setters use a large format font in bold for "Task number" so that tasks can be found easily if this thread grows?

cheers

frank

[5TonsOfFlax]

I think that if you have a blog or external site to which you want to post your code that's great, especially as the tasks become more complex. I don't think there's an issue with putting code in this thread if it's small enough. Or you could create your own mini-task answers thread where we can discuss your particular approaches, and link to that thread here.

[neznein9]

Wish we had a [spoilers] tag or something similar.

If this thread takes off it could almost warrant it's own space in the forum - more like a code based version of the Arena. I like where this is going.

[florianvanthuyn]

Oh, and add some sub-categories to sort the mini-tasks by level of knowledge!