Flash Programming - an abstract notion for some of us, even for those who work in this field. Whenever I have to explain what it means, I always choose to compare myself with a puppeteer. The puppeteer makes use of ropes to give life to his puppet and, by analogy, I give life to a design using Flash programming.
Going a step forward, we will find out that the rope is in fact, the programming language which makes all the “fiction” possible. Macromedia called it “ActionScript”, Adobe (the company that bought Macromedia) decided not to change its name, but take it to another level. This is how AS3 (ActionScript 3) was brought to life. If its brothers (AS1, AS2) were more understanding and friendlier, AS3 shows us that things are not as we think. It is a much more powerful language, more object oriented, and pretty difficult for those who don’t have a strong programming background. This language managed to raise a lot of eyebrows, dividing the Flash world into two:
- Finally the guys from Adobe did a good job, we can finally program “by the book”, we finally have a tool that puts no boundaries to your imagination.
- What an annoying thing. They really want us to abandon Flash!
Personally I find myself in the first group, and I really hope that Adobe will not lose this direction. There are many reasons for my choice, and I will try to enumerate some of them: the execution speed is higher, the writing of the code is cleaner and more intuitive, the way events are treated is better, and last but not least, the new method of organizing objects on the scene. If, however, I am to say something negative as well, then it will be the process that a programmer has to take in order to integrate design and animations, which is more difficult than it used to be. AS3 also refers to the last creation of Adobe “Flex 3“- a framework that makes RIA (Rich Internet Aplication) development possible.
As far as I am concerned, I can only wish for a happy ending for everybody, although a new competitor rises on the market, aka Silverlight from Microsoft, which wants to take over as much market share as possible from Adobe.
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