Actionscript 3.0 an Overview

ActionScript 3.0 is a powerful, object oriented programming languages which ideally suits for building rich internet application rapidly without much pain.

ActionScript 3.0 is based on ECMAScript, the international standardized programming language for scripting. ActionScript 3.0 is compliant with the ECMAScript Language Specification, Third Edition (ECMA-262).

ActionScript is executed by the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) built into the Flash Player.The newly optimized Virtual Machine, AVM2, which makes the ActionScript 3.0 code executes up to 10 times faster than the legacy one.

Lets discuss the features

1. The lack of error reporting in ActionScript 2.0 made it hard slog to debug programs. Thanks to the newer version which introduces a variety of runtime exceptions for common error conditions, improving the debugging experience and enabling applications that handle errors robustly.

2. Sealed classes! This a new concept introduced in ActionScript 3.0. A class which contains a fixed set of properties and methods that were defined at compile-time and additional properties and methods cannot be added.This improves the memory and also a strict compile-time checking possible, which will result in more robust programs.

3. Method Closures, the one which i liked the most of all. The previous version of ActionScript won’t remember what object instance it was extracted from, leading to unexpected behavior. Lets take mx.utils.delegate class for an example.

myButton.addEventListener(“click”,Delegate.create(this, someMethod name));

Delgate.create(this, someMethod name));

Now in ActionScript 3.0 , the life is made much simpler with these lines below.

myButton.addEventListener(“click”, someMethod name));

The Class is no longer needed, as the method closure will be generated when the method name is referenced. This will automatically remember its original object instance.

There are more features which you can look into Adobe.

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