General Discussion - Actionscript 3.0: Quick Overview kasselbiddy - Sun Aug 19, 2012 7:03 pm Post subject: Actionscript 3.0: Quick Overview
Flash CS3 is out and Actionscript 3.0 is on its way to your screen, well it's not a really a big surprise, Flash 9 and Flex have been available in their alpha and beta version for a while before their official releases and many flash (SWF to AVI) developers had the opportunity to get their hands dirty with Actionscript 3.0.
I must confess that I have never been a big fan of Flex, the main reason being that I consider that it's been developed only to attract more developers to the flash community. Also, like a lot of Flash developers, I could not find one good reason to learn Flex therefore I waited for the release of Flash CS3 to give it a go and see what Actionscript 3.0 was all about. SWF to MPEG converter.
Recruitment agencies seems to put Flash (convert SWF to MP3) developers and Flex developers in the same package, the reality is very different and from my experience Flash developers are not comfortable using Flex and Flex developers are not at home with Flash.
I have been surfing the Flash wave since Flash 4 and I have been waiting for every new version of Flash with excitement. Flash 5, especially, was a big improvement. For those of use who tried to program their fist game or application in Flash 4 the new version of Actionscript was very exciting, we could do a lot more without loosing too much hair. With each new version of Flash it's been very clear than the development team was trying to enrich the actionscript syntax and to bring it in line with the ECMAScript standard (Javascript, JSscript).
With the release of Flash MX 2004 Actionscript 2.0 was born and it was the first big improvement for Flash developers coming from a development background. I remember the "woohoo" and "wow" of one of my colleague at work who was coming from a C++ and strict OOP background, he was obviously getting very excited that Flash was making a move in his direction. For designers who struggled long enough to grasp the concepts of Actionscript 1.0 this wasn't so much of a good reason to jump up and down. For me, well since Flash is my main tool and "bread provider" I have always tried to stay up to date with the latest developments coming with each new version and the time has come to see what's in stock for us in the Actionscript 3.0 box.
A new version of Actionscript?
Actionscript 3.0 is a not strictly a totally new version of Actionscript, you can still write "frame based" code and the dot syntax you are familiar with is still there.
Actionscript 3.0 is now a powerful, object-oriented programming language. AS3.0 revolves around objects, classes, properties and methods. Actionscript 3.0 is more strictly Object Oriented than the previous versions of Actionscript, in some cases you are going to have to write more code to achieve results that would have required less code in AS2.0. So you might be wondering why would you bother writing more code to achieve the same result? Well the first important thing is that AS3.0 is supposed to be 10 time faster than AS2.0.
Many exciting classes and methods have been added to AS3.0, amongst many of them I am going to mention the frameRate method of the Stage class that let you set the frame rate of your movie dynamically, a long time dream for many Flash developer If you ever wanted to be able to create your own sound spectrum Winamp style well it is out there with the computeSpectrum method. Also a lot of older methods like getURL, loadMovie, onClipEvent, have been replaced with newer methods, some other methods and properties like removeMovieClip, _global, attachMovie have just been removed.
3 good reasons to learn Actionscript 3.0
It is never easy to change our long time habits. It is somehow painful to have to destroy what we've been patiently building but if we can realize that it is for the best things are not that difficult. So let me show you why you should start learning Actionscript 3.0
1. I guess that if you are a professional Flash developer you don't want to be left behind, also you might have to start on the AS3.0 project of another developer and you don't want to have to run away screaming because you haven't done your homework.
2. Actionscript 3.0 has been optimized for speed with the introduction of the Sprite class and the Display list. Speed is important as soon as your application starts growing, also if you are a Flash game developer Actionscript 3.0 will give you the opportunity to develop even faster games.
3. Actionscript 3.0 introduces many new beneficial improvements:
* New event handling system, there is now a single event handling system instead of the many different event-handling mechanisms that existed in previous versions of the actionscript.
* ActionScript 3.0 includes a group of classes based on the ECMAScript for XML (E4X) specification. These classes include powerful and easy-to-use functionality for working with XML data. Working with XML is a lot easier now in Actionscript 3.0 than it was in Actionscript 2.0.
* ActionScript 3.0 includes native support for regular expressions so that you can quickly search for and manipulate strings. ActionScript 3.0 implements support for regular expressions.
* A new system called the "Display list" has been introduced to handle the visual elements on the stage. Depth management is now automatic and built into Flash Player, rendering assignment of depth numbers unnecessary.
Since AS3.0 is out for Flash CS3 and has been out for a while with Flex a lot of people are considering that it is very trendy to say that they are programming in AS 3.0, the reality in that in the concrete world not everything is so straightforward in AS 3.0, compared to AS2.0. It can take a lot longer to create some basic interactivities in AS3.0 and if you are mainly a Flash designer adding basic code to your projects, you won't see many benefits in using AS3.0. Actionscript 3.0 brings many more features that I am not mentioning here but that will I will approach in the tutorials to come, make sure to come and check them out. dexter - Sun Aug 19, 2012 11:54 pm Post subject: Skin Store Coupon Codes has Stitchway
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