1. An Overview of ActionScript The Powerful Scripting Language of Macromedia Flash

2. History: Purpose Front End Development Character Animations Rich Application Development – Web Services Motion Graphics

3. History: Author Macromedia – Flash Engineering Team Approachable Creative Power Gary Grossman – Senior Engineering Manager, Macromedia Flash Team

4. History: Macromedia Flash Vector Animation Tool Mostly Web Deployed – Flash Player Enjoys a 98% of the World’s browsers support Evolved into a rich client delivery vehicle

5. Flash and ActionScript ActionScript is the Scripting language developed for Flash Most notably handles interactions and event-handling in flash Has access to full capabilities of Flash

6. Flash and ActionScript -Macromedia Flash Interface -- Concept of a timeline

7. Flash and ActionScript Actions Frame Good Program- ming practice

8. History: ECMA-262 Based on several originating technologies – JavaScript(Netscape) – Jscript(Microsoft) Invented by Brendan Eich at Netscape Started Development: November 1996 Approved as international standard: April 1998

9. History: ECMAScript Scripting Language Originally designed for the Web Object based – Cluster of Communicating Objects

10. History: ECMAScript Built-in types: – Undefined – Null – Boolean – Number – String – Object

11. History: ECMAScript Built-in objects: – Global – Function – Array – String – Boolean – Number – Date – Math

12. History: ECMAScript Built-in Operators – Unary – Multiplicative – Additive – Relational

13. ActionScript Flash MX runs ActionScript version 6 (MX) Differs slightly from the ECMA-262 standard

14. Differences from ECMAScript Exception Handling String to Boolean conversion Case sensitivity Function Constructor Date Object

15. Differences from JavaScript Object Model Undeclared Variables Invoking Undeclared Variables

16. Lexical Structure Whitespace Statement Terminators Comments Reserved Words Identifiers Case Sensitivity

17. Features: Strengths Cross-Platform Consistency High-level Abstraction Massive Developer base Massive Web use Object-Oriented – Inheritance Polymorphism

18. Features: Weaknesses Limitations – Flash Scripting language Proprietary Flash Player Exception Handling

19. Sample Implementations Kartoo Neostream Interactive

20. Flash Player Not open source Flash Player Specification License – May have been developed in several languages – Portable C++ source code version – Hint of java

21. SWF file format Open Source Designed with the following in mind: – On-screen Display – Extensibility – Network Delivery – Simplicity – File Independence – Scalability – Speed SWF file format – http://www.openswf.org/spec

22. Links www.macromedia.com/support/flash www.flashkit.com www.ultraschock.com www.asp101.com/articles/flash www.flashcom.info www.macromedia.com/software/flash/fl ashremoting www.macromedia.com/software/flash/fl ashremoting

23. Resources ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide – Colin Moock, O’Reilly Publications Macromedia Flash Support Site – http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash ECMA Language Specifications – www.ecma-international.org/publications/ files/ecma-st/Ecma-262.pdf