Personalized user-customizable Countdown Timer through flash/actionscript - actionscript-3

Question

To be honest, I have no experience in flash. So if anyone can point me to the necessary direction. That would be great. I was tasked to build a countdown timer with all the features that can be found on http://www.online-stopwatch.com/
You might argue that why don't I use the one found in the link I provided but I was tasked to create a personalized one with background and layout that will be completely different from the one in the link.
I've looked at some tutorials but none can point me to the direction that's needed. Thank you for the help.

Answer 1

This is not really a question that can be answered in one answer, its more like you need to completely learn action-script 3.0 and then use that knowledge to write this program.
Here is a link to a book that i found great for learning action-script 3.0 and flash in general. IF you don't want to learn everything about action-script 3.0 then consider looking up tutorials on the basics of it and then specifically on the Timer Class. If you want a good program that has everything that the website you cited has, then you should probably just read the Essential Actin script 3 book, but if your pressed for time you can quickly learn the basics and try and throw something together, but it won't be very good.

Answer 2

Normally a question on SO that shows no attempt on the OP's part to solve their issue would get little attention, but I just happen to have this around from helping someone else with it so you're in luck! I can't help you learn how to use Flash per se, put this is the logic you'll need.
The following class should take care of what you're looking for:
myClockMC is a movieclip with five textfields in it, days, hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds.
You might need to adjust names and paths within this class to get it working with your construct.
Use this signature to instantiate:
var myClock:CountdownClock = new CountdownClock( myClockMC, 2014, 8, 20 );
package
{
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.events.Event;
public class CountdownClock extends MovieClip
{
public function CountdownClock( clip:MovieClip, targetMonth:Number, targetDay:Number, targetYear:Number )
{
trace('new CountdownClock');
addEventListener( Event.ENTER_FRAME, update );
}
private function update( evt:Event ):void
{
var date:Date = new Date();
var targetDate:Date = new Date( targetYear, targetMonth, targetDay );
var currentYear:Number = date.getFullYear();
var currentTime:Number = date.getTime();
var targetTime:Number = targetDate.getTime();
var diff:Date = new Date( targetDate - date );
var timeLeft:Number = targetTime - currentTime;
var millSecs:Number = diff.getMilliseconds();
var seconds:Number = Math.floor(timeLeft / 1000);
var minutes:Number = Math.floor(seconds / 60);
var hours:Number = Math.floor(minutes / 60);
var days:Number = Math.floor(hours / 24);
seconds = String(seconds % 60);
if (seconds.length < 2)
{
seconds = "0" + seconds;
}
minutes = String(minutes % 60);
if (minutes.length < 2)
{
minutes = "0" + minutes;
}
hours = String(hours % 24);
if (hours.length < 2)
{
hours = '0' + hours;
}
days = String(days);
if (days.length < 2)
{
days = '0' + days;
}
clip.daysWindow.text = days;
clip.hoursWindow.text = hours;
clip.minutesWindow.text = minutes;
clip.secondsWindow.text = seconds;
clip.millSecsWindow.text = millSecs;
if(days == '00' && hours == '00' && minutes == '00' && seconds == '00')
{
updateAfterReachingDate( clip );
}
}
private function updateAfterReachingDate( mc:MovieClip ):void
{
removeEventListener( Event.ENTER_FRAME, update );
// handle timer target reached
}
}
}