Macromedia MAX 2005 - Anaheim, CA What’s New In Flash 8
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You can see that even though the component resized, the Button's border and text label do
not distort. The button's label remained centered and maintained its font size.
Although components of version 2 of the Macromedia Component Architecture do not use 9-
slice scaling, components handle scaling in the version 2 component architecture so the
outlines do not change size (as shown in the next figure).
Imagine that the button instance is sliced into 9 separate pieces, or a 3 by 3 grid, similar to a
keypad on a telephone or keyboard. When you resize the button instance horizontally, only
the three vertical segments in the center (numbers 2, 5, and 8 on a keypad) stretch so your
content doesn't appear distorted.
If you resized the button instance vertically, only the three horizontal segments in the center
(numbers 4, 5, and 6 on a keypad) would resize. The four corners of the scaling grid are not
scaled at all, which allows the component to grow without looking like it is being stretched
(see the following images).
TIP:
Strokes are created from the edges after the 9-slice scaling transformation, and therefore
don't deform or lose detail.
You can enable slice guides for 9-slice scaling in the Flash environment within the Convert to
Symbol dialog box or the Symbol Properties dialog box. The Enable guides for 9-slice scaling check
box is available only if you are publishing for Flash Player 8 and the behavior is set to movie clip.
The 9-slice scaling guides are not available for earlier versions of Flash or if you are creating a
button or graphic symbol. 9-slice scaling can be enabled in ActionScript by setting the scale9Grid
property on a movie clip instance.
Whether you created your slice guides by using the user interface or by using ActionScript, you can
trace the x coordinate, y coordinate, width, and height by tracing the movie clip's scale9Grid
property.
trace(my_mc.scale9Grid); // (x=20, y=20, w=120, h=120)
