start/stopDrag() vs. MOUSE_MOVE?

[Ralgoth]

I actually lean towards MOUSE_MOVE. It's easier to adjust the placement of the icon.

Also, I'm not sure if this is a problem w/ AS3 (I haven't tried it), but I seem to recall there being a conflict if you try to use startDrag on two objects simultaniously. So if you want to let a user drag something, then you're in trouble because they're already dragging the cursor icon. You can move as many objects as you want with MOUSE_MOVE. Oh, and startDrag tends to make stuff "blink" to the cursor location on click, not that it matters with your current project.

But uh, don't take my word for it. I haven't used startDrag since AS2.

I would move the "myCursor_mc.visible = true;" line outside of the function though. There's no need to tell the clip to be visible every time the mouse moves; unless you have a timer that makes it disapear after sitting idle.

as for cacheAsBitmap... you usually only want to do it if you have a highly detailed vector art that stays static. Otherwise, if the object is moving, you're making flash work extra hard to render the vector as a bitmap every frame. If you have the debug version of flash installed, you can right-click and have it "Show Redraw Regions" to see what flash is drawing each frame.

There is another use for cacheAsBitmap though. If you want to use alpha channels in a mask, you can make both the object and its mask cacheAsBitmap. Very handy, but again, very processor intensive.

Now I've gone and said too much.

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Edit:

Oh, and Joshstrike's code is good. He's using ENTER_FRAME instead, which is probably going to be the quickest response. I guess the best method ultimately depends on your projects frame rate and how processor intensive it is.