Working with actionscript – Adobe Flash Professional CC 2014 v.13.0 User Manual
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Working with ActionScript
Getting started with ActionScript
The Actions panel
Script window overview
Tools in the Actions panel and Script window
Access context-sensitive Help from the Actions panel
Set ActionScript preferences
Getting started with ActionScript
The ActionScript® scripting language lets you add complex interactivity, playback control, and data display to your application. You can add
ActionScript in the authoring environment by using the Actions panel, Script window, or an external editor.
ActionScript follows its own rules of syntax, reserved keywords, and lets you use variables to store and retrieve information. ActionScript includes a
large library of built-in classes that let you create objects to perform many useful tasks. For more information on ActionScript, see the following
Help titles:
Learning ActionScript 3.0 at
Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Adobe Flash at
You don’t need to understand every ActionScript element to begin scripting; if you have a clear goal, you can start building scripts with simple
actions.
ActionScript and JavaScript are both rooted in the ECMA-262 standard, the international standard for the ECMAScript scripting language. For this
reason, developers who are familiar with JavaScript should find ActionScript immediately familiar. For more information about ECMAScript, go to
ecma-international.org.
Adobe recommends
Discover the fundamentals of
ActionScript 3.0 by building your own
Flash applications. In just nine short
lessons, you'll learn how to use AS3 to
interact with internet users worldwide.
Which version of ActionScript should you use?
Flash includes more than one version of ActionScript to meet the needs of different kinds of developers and playback hardware. ActionScript 3.0
and 2.0 are not compatible with each other.
ActionScript 3.0 executes extremely fast. This version requires somewhat more familiarity with object-oriented programming concepts than
the other ActionScript versions. ActionScript 3.0 is fully compliant with the ECMAScript specification, offers better XML processing, an
improved event model, and an improved architecture for working with onscreen elements. FLA files that use ActionScript 3.0 cannot include
earlier versions of ActionScript.
(Deprecated with Flash Professional CC only) ActionScript 2.0 is simpler to learn than ActionScript 3.0. Although Flash Player runs compiled
ActionScript 2.0 code slower than compiled ActionScript 3.0 code, ActionScript 2.0 is still useful for many kinds of projects that are not
computationally intensive; for example, more design-oriented content. ActionScript 2.0 is also based on the ECMAScript spec, but is not fully
compliant.
(Deprecated with Flash Professional CC) ActionScript 1.0 is the simplest form of ActionScript, and is still used by some versions of the Flash
Lite Player. ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 can coexist in the same FLA file.
(Deprecated with Flash Professional CC) Flash Lite 2.x ActionScript is a subset of ActionScript 2.0 that is supported by Flash Lite 2.x running
on mobile phones and devices.
(Deprecated with Flash Professional CC) Flash Lite 1.x ActionScript is a subset of ActionScript 1.0 that is supported by Flash Lite 1.x running
on mobile phones and devices.
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