AS3 Cursor

You've created your Actionscript button for the AS3 Cursor!?

When your creating a button in pure ActionScript 3 you will have first needed to create a graphic for your button to place your AS3 Cursor on. This graphic could be something like a simple yellow box. Your code could look like the following.

Remember to import in flash.display.Graphics

//Imports 
import flash.display.Graphics;

//Draw the button Sprite
var button:Sprite = new Sprite();
button.graphics.beginFill(0xFFCC00);
button.graphics.drawRect(0,0,200,200);
button.graphics.endFill();
 
//Add Button Sprite to stage
this.addChild(button);

At this stage you would be thinking - 'how do I add my AS3 hand cursor to the AS3 button graphic that I've just created?' So that the graphic actaully gives the user experience of a button, when the user rolls over the graphic. This is done using a hand cursor, and is implemented with the following code:

AS3 Hand Cursor Code

//Add useHandCursor, buttonMode, and mouseChildren if required
button.useHandCursor = true;
button.buttonMode = true;
button.mouseChildren = false;

Awesome! So now you've added buttonMode and useHandCursor to the AS3 button. The graphic you've created has a user experience of a button when the user hovers over it. You may also want to set mouseChildren = false; on the button. What does mouseChildren false do?
As this is quite a basic tutorial I will not go into that here, but check our Adobe Livedocs for a full explanation. (References below)

AS3 Cursor Example Implementation

Here is the code for what we've just created; an AS3 Button with a hand cursor.

package 
{
 import flash.display.Sprite;
 import flash.events.Event;
 import flash.display.Graphics;
 
 /**
 * ...
 * @author www.how-to-code.com
 */
 public class Main extends Sprite 
 {
 public function Main():void 
 {
 //Draw the button Sprite
 var button:Sprite = new Sprite();
 button.graphics.beginFill(0xFFCC00);
 button.graphics.drawRect(0,0,200,200);
 button.graphics.endFill();
 
 //Add useHandCursor, buttonMode, and mouseChildren if required
 button.useHandCursor = true;
 button.buttonMode = true;
 button.mouseChildren = false;
 
 //Add Button Sprite to stage
 this.addChild(button);
 }
 }
}

If you wish to learn more about the AS3 Hand Cursor the following articles are an excellent resource.