Question

Not sure this exist, but worth asking you all: is there a built in method to compute the distance between the current mouse position and a given component? If not, is there a simple way to build a function like this that works for components with generic shapes?

thank you!

Answer 1

Okay, say you want the distance from the mouse to the top left corner (the default for Flex in this case), just use Pythagoras’ theorem:

var d:int = Math.sqrt(Math.pow(theComponent.mouseX, 2) + Math.pow(theComponent.mouseY, 2));

Again, this would be the distance from the top left corner of ‘theComponent’. If you want it to be from the center of the component, do this:

var d:int = Math.sqrt(Math.pow(theComponent.mouseX - theComponent.width/2, 2) + Math.pow(theComponent.mouseY - theComponent.height/2, 2));

Every DisplayObject has this ‘mouseX/Y’ property which is always relative to the top left corner.