Working with Movie Clips > Using actions and methods to control Timelines > About methods versus actions

About methods versus actions

To use a methods, you invoke it by using the target path to the instance name, followed by a dot, and then the method name and arguments, as in the following statements:

myMovieClip.play();
parentClip.childClip.gotoAndPlay(3);

In the first statement, the play method causes the myMovieClip instance to play. In the second statement, the gotoAndPlay method sends the playhead in childClip (which is a child of the instance parentClip) to frame 3 and plays.

Actions that control a Timeline have a Target parameter that specifies the target path. For example, in the following script the startDrag action targets the customCursor instance and makes it draggable:

on(press){
	startDrag("customCursor");
}

When you use a method, you call the method at the end of the target path. For example, the following statement performs the same startDrag function:

customCursor.startDrag();

Statements written using the MovieClip object methods tend to be more brief because they don't require the tellTarget action. Use of the tellTarget action is discouraged because it is not compatible with the ECMA-262 standard.

For example, to tell movie clip myMovieClip to start playing using the MovieClip object methods, you would use the following code:

myMovieClip.play();

The following code produces the same results by using the tellTarget action:

tellTarget ("myMovieClip") {
	play();
}