The New Components
It seems that Macromedia can't leave those useful components alone. With Flash MX, you had seven components; with Flash MX 2004, you get almost double the number (and if you have the Pro version, you have 30 components).
Components are extremely useful tools. Each component is a special Flash movie built with ActionScript that does specific functions. These functions may be adding check box or drop-down lists to movies. Believe it or not, this used to be a bear to do in Flash. Now, with components, creating forms is a snap.
The default set of components includes a Text Input box, a Label box, a Combo box, List menu, Text Area, Check box, and Radio button, among others.
NOTE
I will go into the role of components more in a later article. But check out the week on components for Sept 21.
One missing component is the ScrollBar component. This was a nifty component that could be added to any Dynamic Text field in Flash MX. For some reason, I'm not sure why, it is missing in Flash MX 2004. Maybe we will see it in a future release from Macromedia.