trying to understand how scroll bars work

[JohnN]

I am very new to flash/Actionscript and am trying to understand how things work before I start any projects.

I was playing with the scroll bar today, and do not understand it's behavior. I created a
dynamic text box called my_text and used the following code



for (var i=0;i<50;i++){
my_text.text += "this is a test" + i + "\n";
}

Encouraged that it worked as expected, I tried it a little differently. I added an input text box called called in_text, and tried the following code.



in_text.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP, onInputLineKey);
function onInputLineKey(e:KeyboardEvent):void {
if (e.keyCode == 13) { // ENTER was pressed
for (var i=0;i<50;i++){
my_text.text += in_text.text + i + "\n";
}
}
}


This is what I do not understand. my_text was populated with the proper data, but my scroll bar was disabled. I could scroll through the list by highlighting the text, but that was it. What did i do wrong

thank you for your help

[youremin]

but scrollBar component?
Or a custom scrollBar done by you?
In my case i prefer to do my own scrollbars, just a little of math :D

[JohnN]

This was using the UIScrollBar component. I am able to scroll it making my own slider, but I just do not understand why the component can't handle this. I would think that for a basic slider the component would be the most efficient

[youremin]

oh... well... i don't use components... i use my own... so ... i cant help you sorry

[AHernandez]

The default scrollbar component basically sucks and fails miserably any time you want to do anything more than a simple test. You are better off creating your own custom scrolling functionality just using AS3.

[JohnN]

Thank you for your help, you have at least confirmed my fears. I guess with the money they charge for this applicationn I had my expectations set way to high.

[youremin]

It isn't that hard to code your own... i'm even making my own class to use on different projects the same scrollbar code with some tweens and such. It isn't really that hard...