For one thing, target comes a little bit from the W3C DOM event model. It was standard naming for that I believe.
Target represents the object on which can be thought of as having originally broadcast the event. Whomever mentioned the UI part of it is right on. When you think of the MouseEvent CLICK, the target is the actual display object that was clicked on. CurrentTarget is useful when you're dealing with event propagation, it reflects the object that is currently broadcasting the event. For example, if a button was clicked on but that button lives within a container, the container may dispatch the CLICK event via bubbling. Basically indicating that something within it was clicked. In that case, currentTarget is the container, target is the original button that was clicked. I agree source might be a better name, but I think the UI aspect of it kind of held. Matt On 9/24/08 3:04 PM, "gwangdesign" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I just read the documentation for Flex, "The Event Flow": "Flash Player or AIR dispatches event objects whenever an event occurs. If the event target is not on the display list, Flash Player or AIR dispatches the event object directly to the event target. For example, Flash Player dispatches the progress event object directly to a URLStream object. If the event target is on the display list, however, Flash Player dispatches the event object into the display list, and the event object travels through the display list to the event target." http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=16_Event_handling_4.html It looks to me like, in the case in which they mention above, "Flash Player" or "AIR" becomes the source who dispatches the event object and the event target is actually the one that "listens" to the event. Does this "target" term then sound something that makes more sense to lower level programming (such as Flash Player engineers?)? From an API user's point of view, an event source is only "source" anyways... Thanks. --- In [email protected] <mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com> , Samuel Colak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Umm.... > > You have "currentTarget" and "target" - most of the time, these return > very different > values depending on what happened ... > > On Sep 24, 2008, at 11:14 PM, Chuck Preston Jr. wrote: > > > For the same reason tree structures are upside down, with their > > roots at the top. ActionScript > > is from the Bizzaro world. > > > > --- In [email protected] <mailto:flexcoders%40yahoogroups.com> , > > "gwangdesign" <gwangdesign@> > > wrote: > > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > I am just wondering why, in ActionScript, the subject of an event is > > > called a "target"? Is it kind of counter intuitive? In Java, it is > > > called "source", which sounds much more understandable to me. > > > > > > Thanks. > > > > > > > > > >
