CodingForums.com - How to read keyboard input?

(I just found this sub-forum...sorry about posting it in the main Flash/Actionscript forum...)

My program starts out this way:

Code:

    public class MyProgram extends UIComponent 

{

...

Now I heard that any UIComponent registers keyDownHandler automatically, so you just need to override that function.

But although I get no errors, there is NO sign of life as far as keyboard input goes. I programmed the keys to do some drastic things (not shown below) but nothing ever happened. So I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong.

Code:

                override protected function keyDownHandler(e:KeyboardEvent):void {

                        if (e.keyCode == Keyboard.LEFT) {

                              trace("LEFT");

                        }

                        if (e.keyCode == Keyboard.UP) {

                              trace("UP");

                        }

                        if (e.keyCode == Keyboard.DOWN) {

                              trace("DOWN");

                        }

                        if (e.keyCode == Keyboard.RIGHT) {

                              trace("RIGHT");

                        }

                        

                }

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Matthew