Most of us already get that. The problem really lies on how we use getBounds. So, supposing you had a rectangle, and you wanted to find out the minimum X point of that rectangle, the line of code would something like this:
boundXmin = square.getBounds(_root).xMin;
Let’s try and understand this. First, we write the instance’s name (that being “square”). You always need to reference this before the getBounds. Then comes “getBounds”. Its parameter is the timeline you are targeting. In this example, and probably most that you will be using this for, it is in the root timeline, which is the main timeline. Finally comes what value you are trying to obtain, that being the minimum X (xMin). We store all that into our variable called “boundXmin”. Now if you were to trace that variable, like so:
trace(boundXmin);
When testing the movie, the Output window should display the square’s maximum X. If you constantly traced this variable, and the variable were constantly changing (your square would be moving), it would keep tracing the new value.
This getBounds code could later be repeated for the other 3 terms: