In AS2, setting the onPress event for a MovieClip would automatically cause the cursor to switch the hand whenever you hovered over the element. However in AS3 I discovered that in order to get the same functionality it has to be done manually to get the same effect:

//These are properties of the MovieClip class
targetMc.buttonMode = true;
targetMc.useHandCursor = true;

Upon discovering this bit of code, I noticed that I had already created more than a dozen of clickable instances that could use this code and not all of them had classes for them. I had searched for some kind of global variable that I could set to see if I could get this working with all of them the easy way. Alas, I came up with nothing. So instead I decided to create a base class to implement this functionality for me.

import flash.display.MovieClip
 
package com.jelaniharris {
     class ButtonMovieClip extends MovieClip {
          //Override the default constructor and make this movieclip indicate it's a button to the user
          public function ButtonMovieClip (): void {
               this.buttonMode = true;
               this.useHandCursor = true;
          }
     }
}

Then all I needed to do was to go to my library and set the Base Class of all of my button-like elements to the ButtonMovieClip class.

I hoped this helped someone out there.

Honestly .. I'm not sure why. But, here's how you can make it perform better.

Here's how to speed up flash CS3 for vista

1. Navigate to your Program Files -> Adobe folder(s) -> Adobe Flash CS3 and find the Flash.exe.
2. Right click on that file and goto the Compatibility tab.
3. Check "run this program in compatibility mode", and voila, suddenly it's running as fast as it did on XP. Happy coding!