Post on 25-Jun-2015
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?
Saying goodbye to 'skip intro'
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Who is Peter Elst?
• Freelance Flash Platform Consultant• Active in the Flash community since 1998• Adobe Community Expert, Adobe Certified
Professional, Adobe Certified Instructor• Author of Flash MX Most Wanted Components, Object-
Oriented ActionScript for Flash 8, Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0
• Speaking engagements at Adobe MAX, FlashForward, FITC, Flash on the Beach, webDU, Flashconference.de, Multi-Mania, Scotch on the Rocks,…
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Who are you?
• Designer/Developer?• Experience in JavaScript, ActionScript, Java, nothing…?
• Flash is good/bad?
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
What will we talk about• What is ActionScript?• History of Flash and ActionScript• New features in ActionScript 3.0• Interesting projects• Q&A
Feel free to interrupt, ask questions at any time - lets make it interesting
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
“ActionScript is a scripting language based on ECMAScript (JavaScript), used primarily for the development of websites and software using the Adobe Flash Player platform…”
- Wikipedia, February 2008
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
ECMAScript?• ECMA-262 is a specification for a scripting
language• JavaScript, ActionScript etc. are dialects• Adobe is heavily involved in defining ECMA-262 4th
Edition, the basis on which ActionScript 3.0 is built
• The new virtual machine in the Flash Player has been open sourced (November 2006) and donated to Mozilla for use in a future version of the Firefox browser
www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Flash Player 9• New virtual machine added for ActionScript 3.0• Optimized for performance
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Flash Player 9 Statistics• December 2007 survey indicates 93,4% adoption in
Europe
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Really?• Yes and no• There is a huge install base, much higher than any other browser plug-in
• Doesn't show individual dot releases• Flash Player adoption within corporate environments can be significantly lower
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
In the beginning there was…
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
"A Brief History of Timeline"
• 1997 - Macromedia acquires FutureWave
• Add support for stereo sound, bitmaps, library and release it as Flash 2
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
"A Brief History of Timeline"
• 1998 - Macromedia Flash 3 released• Adds support for movie clips, alpha transparency and JavaScript integration
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
"A Brief History of Timeline"
• 1999 - Macromedia Flash 4 released• Support for input text fields, streaming MP3 and variables, loops, conditionals
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
"A Brief History of Timeline"
• 2000 - Macromedia Flash 5 released• ActionScript 1.0, HTML text fields and bezier pen tool are introduced
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
"A Brief History of Timeline"
• 2002 - Macromedia Flash MX released• Adds FLV video support, external MP3, Unicode and components
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
"A Brief History of Timeline"
• 2004 - Macromedia Flash 2004 released
• ActionScript 2.0, data components, data binding, screens based authoring
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
"A Brief History of Timeline"
• 2005 - Macromedia Flash 8 is released
• Adds new video codec with alpha transparency, filters, blend modes
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Adobe acquires Macromedia• Announced on April 18th 2005• $3.4 billion offered for Macromedia• Start work on integration Creative Suite with Macromedia Studio products
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
ActionScript gets decoupled• ActionScript is no longer unique to the Flash authoring environment
• Flash Platform emerges Flash Flex Flash Lite AIR
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Flex SDK goes open source• April 25th 2007 - Flex SDK (command line compiler, component framework,…) get released under an MPL license
• Lowers the threshold for adopting ActionScript 3.0 and MXML
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Open Source Flash?• Flash community has always been very open to sharing code
• Initiative by Aral Balkan, May 2005 www.osflash.org
• Open Source open doors
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
What changed in ActionScript 3.0?
• API consistency, everything is a class
• DisplayList API• ECMAScript for XML (E4X)• DOM3 event model• Runtime errors• Namespaces• Binary sockets, ByteArray• Reflection API• …
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
API consistency
• No more underscores myMC._x -> myMC.x myMC._alpha -> myMC.alpha
• Values from 0 to 1 rather than 0 to 100 myMC.alpha = .5; // 50 percent transparent
• No more createNewMovieClip, attachMovie var myMC:MovieClip = new MovieClip(); var tf:TextField = new TextField();
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
DisplayList API
• Instances can be created in memory• Automatic depth management, more more getNextHighestDepth()
• Allows re-parenting of display objects
var myMC:MovieClip = new MovieClip();mcHolder1.addChild(myMC);// move myMC to be a child of mcHolder2mcHolder2.addChild(myMC);
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
ECMAScript for XML (E4X)
• XML is a native data type• Retrieve, filter nodes using dot notation
<?xml version="1.0"><addressbook> <contact name="John"> <email>john@abc.com</email> </contact> <contact name="Wayne"> <email>wayne@xyz.org</email> </contact></addressbook>
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
ECMAScript for XML (E4X)
Before
myXML.firstChild.childNodes[0].firstChild.nodeValue
ActionScript 3.0
myXML..contact.(@name=="John").email
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
DOM3 Event Model• W3C - DOM Level 3 Event specification
• Constants for event names MouseEvent.MOVE TimerEvent.TIMER
• Supports event bubbling
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Runtime error checking• Flash Player 9 does runtime error checking• Error dialog when debug Flash Player is installed
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Namespaces• Namespaces are introduced for XML and to differentiate methods
• Using the 'use' keyword the compiler knows the scope of which particular namespace to use
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Binary Sockets• flash.net.Socket class allows data to be sent over a socket connection
• Makes it possible to implement all sorts of protocols directly in ActionScript 3.0: IRC, POP3, SMTP, FTP,…
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Reflection API• Classes can describe themselves• Return an XML document with all public methods, properties, inheritance chain.
• describeType()
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
AlivePDF• ActionScript 3.0 library for creating PDF documents on the fly
• Created by Thibault Imbert
www.alivepdf.org
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
FZip• AS3 Library to read in .zip files• Created by Claus Wahlers
www.codeazur.com.br/lab/fzip/
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
FC64• Commodore 64 emulator• Created by Claus Wahlers and Darron Schall
www.osflash.org/fc64
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
FlashVNC• VNC client written in ActionScript 3.0
• Created by Darron Schall
www.osflash.org/fvnc
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Papervision3D• High performance ActionScript 3D engine
• Project started by Carlos Ulloa
www.papervision3d.org
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
What will the future bring?• Further compliance to ECMA-262• Inverse Kinematics API,…• Tamarin-Tracing VM
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Want to learn more?• Books
Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0 Essential ActionScript 3.0
• Online resources weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/
• Course SkillsMatter - Core ActionScript: Object Oriented ActionScript in Practice• April 17-18th• July 10-11th
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Q&A• What do you think?• What features are you most excited about?• What is still missing?
… win a book!
What's new in ActionScript 3.0?In-the-Brain - Peter Elst
Thanks!• Feel free to get in touch
Blog: www.peterelst.com Email: info@peterelst.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/peterelst Twitter: peterelst