MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX 2004-DIRECTOR SCRIPTING, Reference

Page: 91 / 1130

Debugging in the Object inspector 91
Entries after an arrow made up of a double hyphen and right angle bracket (
-->
) indicate lines of
your code that have run. For example, the following Lingo lines:
--> _sound.fadeOut(1, 5*60)
--> if leftSide < 10 then
--> if leftSide < 200 then
--> _movie.go("Game Start")
indicate that these Lingo statements have run. Suppose you were trying to determine why the
playhead did not go to the frame labeled "Game Start." If the line
-->
_movie.go("Game Start")
never appeared in the Message window, maybe the condition in the
previous statement was not what you expected.
The Message window Output pane can fill with large amounts of text when the Trace button is
on. To delete the contents of the Output pane, click the Clear button. If the Output pane is not
visible, the contents of the Input pane are deleted.
You can keep track of the value of variables and other objects by selecting the name of the object
in the Message window and clicking the Inspect Object button. The object is added to the Object
inspector, where its value is displayed and updated as the movie plays. For more information on
the Object inspector, see
“Debugging in the Object inspector” on page 91 .
When you are in debugging mode, you can follow how a variable changes by selecting it in the
Message window and then clicking the Watch Expression button. Director then adds the variable
to the Watcher pane in the Debugger window, where its value is displayed and updated as you
work in the Debugger window. For more information on the Watcher pane, see
“Debugging in
the Debugger window” on page 94 .
Debugging in the Object inspector
With the Object inspector, you can view and set properties of many kinds of objects that are not
displayed in the Property inspector. These include scripting objects such as global variables, lists,
child objects from parent scripts, all 3D cast member properties, sprite properties, script
expressions, and so on. In addition, the Object inspector displays changes to object properties
that occur while a movie plays, such as changes due to scripts or changes to sprite Score
properties. These kinds of runtime changes are not displayed in the Property inspector during
movie playback.
To open the Object inspector:
•
Select Window > Object Inspector.