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I am using Flex with Flash Builder 4 and it provides two classes to work with Custom Flash Professional components, the ContainerMovieClip and UIMovieClip.

I am confused on when to use a ContainerMovieClip and when to use a UIMovieClip.

Since ContainerMovieClip can hold only one component, I don't see how is it better than just placing the component directly on the design area.

I would have thought of using it as a inner frame to arrange multiple components that can be moved together by modifying the X,Y coordinates of the container, but I understand this isn't how it works, right?

I'd appriciate if you could answer this or direct me to an article on

1) When to use UIMovieClip and when to use a ContainerMovieClip?

2) Why ContainerMovieClip can hold only a single component?

Thanks.

RaamEE

RaamEE
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1 Answers1

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Adobe's help docs are very useful and 90% of the time they will answer your questions.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/mx/flash/UIMovieClip.html

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/mx/flash/ContainerMovieClip.html

Jordan
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  • Hi, unluckily for me, this is the other 10%. Although detailing all the technical data behind the classes, these documents failed to answer the 2 questions I presented above. Thanks. – RaamEE Apr 13 '11 at 04:01
  • Question number 2 answers question number one. Use a containermovieclip when u need only one other component inside the containing movieclip. Otherwise use uimovieclip. If there is no difference in directly placing a component on the design area, then don't use either class. I've honestly never heard of either of those classes and I bet u would be better off using the MovieClip class, which can hold any number of components. – Jordan Apr 13 '11 at 08:38
  • Hi, I'd like to point out that I came to know of these classes because Flash Builder 4 provides these two classes as drag and drop components that you can place in the mxml document and then by double-clicking they are opened in Flash Professional CS5 and you can then edit them. Since they are provided by the Builder IDE, I am trying to figure out what are the differences between them, but couldn't find an answer so far. – RaamEE Apr 14 '11 at 08:49
  • i just convert all the flash elements to a flex component and i extend them using UIMovieClip. i would also like to know where exactly it's better to use ContainerMovieClip. unfortunately after reading the docs it's still not 100% clear. – ufk Oct 23 '11 at 17:30