.:Actionscript 3.0:. Calling all flashers!

[Jesterarts]

Hey,

My work is making the switch in our projects from AS2.0 to AS3.0

Currently I'm building a simple swf basically with a bunch of text buttons that when clicked will trigger a transition animation and load a new flash of a content movieclip i have.

Very simple stuff. All scripting is on the timeline and not classe based.

In AS2.0 this script would have taken maybe 120 lines given there are 20 buttons.

AS3.0 I'm upto 300+ lines and i haven't yet started on the script that will check which content is currently displayed and control the timing of the transition animation.

Plus i have found that AS3.0 has become alot more complex and unforgiving that AS2.0

What are you opinions?

Good resources online and in print?

I have the O'Reilly "Essential Actionscript 3.0" book and a very VERY good harcore programmer at my disposal to help me with stuff.

Both of these are a massive help.

But how are other people finding it?

[minux]

I only use it for "personal use" but I am finding it to be a nightmare. AS2.0 FTW

[Tom_1569]

Yeah I used two all through school, even made a web page in it, it was actually quite fun, im now at TAFE and we have the option of using 2 or 3, personel choice is two cause im familiar, but i tryed to help a girl using 3, and omg wat a nightmare, its horible, action script 2 FTW, or Flash 5 is even easier haha.

[ProphetVX]

Unforgiving is good. It forces developers to adhere to the scripts guidelines and gives a clear cut path and outcome.

AS2.0 was good, but if you made an error somewhere down the track and the interpreter just let it slip, it was often a nightmare to find where it was going wrong. Forcing people to produce better code will only help you in the long run.

Casual developers may find it difficult to pick it up initially, but once you get the knack of it, you'll never want to go back.

But I have a degree in software development, so I'm more likely to like it than some bloke with a multimedia major. My experience with forgiving scripting languages is that they create twice the amount of work down the track if you've got any sort of complex code.

[Joey_21]

are u using java code 2 make it? had 2 do that **** at school sucks balls way 2 hard

[Jesterarts]

... so I'm more likely to like it than some bloke with a multimedia major...

lol.. yeah that would be me... lol

Yeah, I'm getting my head around it fairly well...

I've done some basic random movement, button functionality and variables stuff...

Gonna take abit of time to get used to but thats the latest and greatest so I'm just gonna have to suck it up and deal with it. lol

Our animator also had some issues with is as it treats audio differently now so that was very frustrating to work out.

[ProphetVX]

are u using java code 2 make it? had 2 do that **** at school sucks balls way 2 hard

Flash is a standalone application. Are you talking about Java (J2SE/J2EE) to display the page, or javascript to insert the flash object?

They aren't really relevant, you can put flash in any webpage just by using regular HTML.

[ProphetVX]

lol.. yeah that would be me... lol

Yeah, I'm getting my head around it fairly well...

I've done some basic random movement, button functionality and variables stuff...

Gonna take abit of time to get used to but thats the latest and greatest so I'm just gonna have to suck it up and deal with it. lol

Our animator also had some issues with is as it treats audio differently now so that was very frustrating to work out.

I can imagine it could be difficult to learn for someone who really hasn't had any experience in producing code elsewhere other than AS or javascript. Eventually however, it'll allow you to produce much better and managed code, which means it'll be far easier to expand on your existing code in the future.

That's my biggest gripe with Actionscript, I've had some large projects (developing software for touchscreens) that basically used a .NET app to put flash in a container for the animations and core application, then communicated the data between the two components, it eventually got to the point that adding any new functionality was very difficult because of a real lack of true object oriented design, lax parsing of code and some nuances that just caused some weird outcomes (in particular using SOAP in AS). Actionscript 3.0 tries to rectify alot of those issues, and it'll be much better moving forward. AS 1.0/2.0 were mainly designed just to manipulate the animations, whereas AS3 has alot of potential for data manipulation and is really moving towards a useful tool for developing applications, not just pretty interfaces. They needed to go in this direction to compete with Silverlight which is a tool that targets developers first and the multimedia aspect later, producing far more efficient and powerful web apps.