SkillsMatter - In-the-Brain session - What's new in ActionScript 3.0

Slide 1: What's new in ActionScript 3.0? Saying goodbye to 'skip intro'

Slide 2: 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,… In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 3: Who are you? • Designer/Developer? • Experience in JavaScript, ActionScript, Java, nothing…? • Flash is good/bad? In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 4: 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 In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 5: “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 In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 6: 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/ In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 7: Flash Player 9 • New virtual machine added for ActionScript 3.0 • Optimized for performance In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 8: Flash Player 9 Statistics • December 2007 survey indicates 93,4% adoption in Europe In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 9: 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 In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 10: In the beginning there was… In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 11: \"A Brief History of Timeline\" • 1997 - Macromedia acquires FutureWave • Add support for stereo sound, bitmaps, library and release it as Flash 2 In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 12: \"A Brief History of Timeline\" • 1998 - Macromedia Flash 3 released • Adds support for movie clips, alpha transparency and JavaScript integration In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 13: \"A Brief History of Timeline\" • 1999 - Macromedia Flash 4 released • Support for input text fields, streaming MP3 and variables, loops, conditionals In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 14: \"A Brief History of Timeline\" • 2000 - Macromedia Flash 5 released • ActionScript 1.0, HTML text fields and bezier pen tool are introduced In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 15: \"A Brief History of Timeline\" • 2002 - Macromedia Flash MX released • Adds FLV video support, external MP3, Unicode and components In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 16: \"A Brief History of Timeline\" • 2004 - Macromedia Flash 2004 released • ActionScript 2.0, data components, data binding, screens based authoring In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 17: \"A Brief History of Timeline\" • 2005 - Macromedia Flash 8 is released • Adds new video codec with alpha transparency, filters, blend modes In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 18: Adobe acquires Macromedia • Announced on April 18th 2005 • $3.4 billion offered for Macromedia • Start work on integration Creative Suite with Macromedia Studio products In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 19: ActionScript gets decoupled • ActionScript is no longer unique to the Flash authoring environment • Flash Platform emerges  Flash  Flex  Flash Lite  AIR In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 20: 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 In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 21: 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 In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 22: 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 • … In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 23: 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(); In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 24: 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 mcHolder2 mcHolder2.addChild(myMC); In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 25: 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> In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 26: ECMAScript for XML (E4X) Before myXML.fi rstChild.childNodes[0].fi rstChild.nodeValue ActionScript 3.0 myXML..contact.(@name==\"John\").email In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 27: DOM3 Event Model • W3C - DOM Level 3 Event specification • Constants for event names  MouseEvent.MOVE  TimerEvent.TIMER • Supports event bubbling In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 28: Runtime error checking • Flash Player 9 does runtime error checking • Error dialog when debug Flash Player is installed In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 29: 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 In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 30: 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,… In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 31: Reflection API • Classes can describe themselves • Return an XML document with all public methods, properties, inheritance chain. • describeType() In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 32: AlivePDF • ActionScript 3.0 library for creating PDF documents on the fly • Created by Thibault Imbert www.alivepdf.org In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 33: FZip • AS3 Library to read in .zip files • Created by Claus Wahlers www.codeazur.com.br/lab/fzip/ In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 34: FC64 • Commodore 64 emulator • Created by Claus Wahlers and Darron Schall www.osflash.org/fc64 In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 35: FlashVNC • VNC client written in ActionScript 3.0 • Created by Darron Schall www.osflash.org/fvnc In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 36: Papervision3D • High performance ActionScript 3D engine • Project started by Carlos Ulloa www.papervision3d.org In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 37: What will the future bring? • Further compliance to ECMA-262 • Inverse Kinematics API,… • Tamarin-Tracing VM In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 38: 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 In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 39: Q&A • What do you think? • What features are you most excited about? • What is still missing? … win a book! In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?

Slide 40: Thanks! • Feel free to get in touch  Blog: www.peterelst.com  Email: info@peterelst.com  LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/peterelst  Twitter: peterelst In-the-Brain - Peter Elst What's new in ActionScript 3.0?