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mc._width

Description

The floating-point _width property stores a nonnegative number specifying the current width of mc, in pixels. If mc has no content, _width is 0. The _width property measures the content of a clip or movie as the distance between the leftmost occupied pixel and the rightmost occupied pixel, even if there is empty space between those pixels. An occupied pixel is a pixel that contains a shape, graphic, button, movie clip, text field, or other content element. Changes made to a clip's width in the authoring tool or via _xscale are reflected by _width.

Setting the value of _width resizes a movie clip horizontally. Attempts to set _width to a negative value are ignored. Setting a clip's _width to 0 does not hide the clip; it turns it into a one-pixel vertical line. Flash's basic unit of measure is a twentieth of a pixel (a "twip"), so the shortest legal _width change is .05 pixels. Smaller increments are ignored:

trace(ball_mc._width);    // Displays: 100
ball_mc._width += .01;
trace(ball_mc._width);    // Still displays 100. The assignment had no effect.

The _width of the main movie (either _root._width or _leveln._width) is not the Stage width as specified under Modify Document Dimensions (or Modify Movie Dimensions in Flash 5) in the authoring tool, but rather the width of the contents of the main movie. As of Flash 6, the movie's specified dimensions are available via Stage.height and Stage.width.

For a loading movie, the _width property returns undefined until the movie has completely loaded.

Usage

Note that when we set the width of a movie clip, lines are scaled proportionally, losing their original point size as set in the Stroke panel. However, the point size of lines set to Hairline in the Stroke panel is not scaled when a movie clip is resized. Use hairlines to prevent your strokes from appearing fat or distorted when a clip is scaled.

Example

ball_mc._width = 20;         // Set the width of ball_mc to 20 pixels
ball_mc._width *= 2;         // Double the width of ball_mc

See Also

MovieClip._height, MovieClip._xscale, Stage.width

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