DisplayObject Flash Class

The DisplayObject class is the parent class for all visual components in the Flash player. Every class that can render to the Stage inherits from DisplayObject. Common subclasses of DisplayObject that you may be familiar with include Sprite, Shape, Bitmap, and MovieClip.

The DisplayObject, however, does not contain any methods for rendering data on screen. These methods are added by subclasses. For example, the Sprite and Shape classes support the graphics:Graphics property which supports the Flash drawing API. However, Bitmap, TextField, and StaticText do not support the drawing API and instead directly render images or text.

DisplayObject inherits from EventDispatcher because every DisplayObject participates in the event loop of the Flash player.