Making use of the Key.ALT isDown

Question

I need to make a keyhandler which will respond to the alt key
being pressed, but all i get is the menu. in my experience most
prgrams do not activate the menu's unless the altkey is released
with no other action, OR if alt+? is selected.
So, i am hoping that there is a way to make it so that
alt+arrow_key can be targeted... anyone?
-E

Answer 1

VoxEcho,
> I need to make a keyhandler which will respond to the
> alt key being pressed, but all i get is the menu.
What menu are you talking about? Are you in the IDE? Are you
testing
in a web page? In a Projector?
> in my experience most prgrams do not activate the menu's
> unless the altkey is released with no other action, OR
if alt+?
> is selected.
On WinXP Home, I see the file menu take focus in Flash,
Photoshop, and
Word when I hit Alt by itself. Maybe I don't understand what
you're asking?
> So, i am hoping that there is a way to make it so that
> alt+arrow_key can be targeted... anyone?
Your subject line kind of points in the right direction. :)
Look up
the Key class in the ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference;
specifically, the
Key.isDown() method -- you'll see some sample code. Note:
this is for
*most* cases. For better or worse, though, Alt is the odd one
out. Alt
does not trigger the Key.onKeyDown or Key.onKeyUp event.
You have to constantly check for the Alt key in a loop of
some kind,
such as setInterval() or MovieClip.onEnterFrame ...
this.onEnterFrame = function() {
if (Key.isDown(18)) {
trace("Alt is being pressed!");
... and you have to know that the key code for Alt is 18. A
big difficult,
because that number is mysteriously missing from the Keyboard
Keys and Key
Code Values entry of the documentation.
David Stiller
Adobe Community Expert
Dev blog,
http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."