ActionScript

About ActionScript

•      ActionScript is a programming language.
•      ActionScript started as a scripting language for Macromedia Flash authoring tool.
•      ActionScript is developed by Adobe.
•      ActionScript basically run in Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR.
•      It requires run time environment.
•      It is a dialect of ECMAScript
•      It has interactivity data handling.
•      It execution is different to other programming language.
•      ActionScript Virtual Machine(AVM) executes the script.
•      AVM is a part Flash Player and AIR.
•      Its code compiled into a special format name bytecode .
•      Bytecode format  is built in Adobe® Flash® CS4 Professional or Adobe® Flex™     Builder™.
•      ActionScript is open source language

Timeline by player version

• Flash Player 2: Adobe released Flash Player 2 firstly with scripting support. It supports         some timeline controls as gotoAndPlay, gotoAndStop, nextFrame and nextScene .

• Flash Player 3: Adobe expanded basic scripting support of Flash Player 2. It expaned ability were to load external SWFs. SWF is movable. Adobe released this version as Flash Player 3.

• Flash Player 4: Adobe expanded the scripting support with for loops, conditionals,variavles and other basic language constructors. This scripting named as ActionScripting. Adobe released this version as Flash Player 4.

• Flash Player 5: Adobe further improve there ActionScript including protype-based programming based on ECMAScript . It also allowed procedural programming as well as object-oriented programming. This version named as Flash Player 5.

• Flash Player 6: Flash Player 6 is an event handling model. It has accessibility controls and support for switch and AMF, RTMP protocol. AMF and RTMP controls allow for on demand audio/video treaming. Adobe named this version as Flash Player 6.

• Flash Player 7: This version included CSS for ActionScript 2.0. It is a programming language. It is based on ECMAScript 4 Netscape Proposal with class-based inheritance. This language can run in Flash Player 6.

• Flash Player 8: In this version extended extended ActionScript 1/ActionScript 2. It added some new features class library with API. This feature actually is controlling bitmap data at run-time. It also included file uploades and live filters for blur and dropshadow.

• Flash Player 9: This version initially called Flash Player 8.5. AVM2 was included in this version. It also supported AVM1. Its aso included new JIT compiler. Some interesting features were added like binary sockets, E4X XML parsing, TR1 = LIXO full-screen mode and Regular Expressions. This version titled as Adobe Flash Player.
• Flash Player 10: This version initially called Astro. In this version added an interesting         feature 3D manipulation. For example rotating on the X, Y, and Z axis, and a 3D drawing API.     It has ability to create custom filters using Adobe Pixel Bender. Flash Player 10 are now         offering some features like GPU. It gives a noticeable decrease to rendering time for each         frame, resulting in higher frame rates, especially with H.264 video.  This version also included     audio by new sound API.

Timeline by ActionScript version

ActionScript 1 (2000–2003)
Think of ActionScript as a version of JavaScript tailored for Flash multimedia and animation/movieclip objects"(3). Action was available in Flash 4. One step inhanced Flash 4 named ActionScript released of Flash 5 in September 2000. This version of ActionScript incluences from JavaScript and ECMA-262. This version supported standard’s object model , Object-Oriented language and  many of its core daty types. Local variable and user defined functions also supported. Next released version in Flash Player 6 included some minor changes as switch statement and strict-epuality (===) operator as like ECMA-262. Later version that distinguish it are its loose type system and reliance on prototype-based inheritance. ActionScript attached to frames, Buttons and MovieClips.

ActionScript 2.0 (2003–2006)
ActionScript 2.0 was released in September 2003. At the same time Flash MX 2004, Flash Player 7 were released. It meet the user demand by equipped larger and more complex applications. Main features were compile-time type checking and class-based syntax. In this version user-define variable, class-based inheritance systax also included.  This version included partially to the ECMAScript.
ActionScript 3.0 (2006–today)
ActionScript 3.0 released in 2006. Its corresponding player is Flash Player 9. It debuted with Adobe Flex 2.0. ActionScript 3.0 added support to DiretX and OpenGL.
This language include features :
·         Compile-time and run-time type checking
·         Improve prototype-based inheritance to class-based inheritance.
·         Packages, namespaces and regular expressions are supported.
·         Flash Player API converted to packages.
·         DOM event handling standard.
·         XML processing support.
·         Control  Flash runtime display
ECMAScript is completely implemented    

Flash Lite

• Flash Lite 1.0: Flash Lite 1.0 is same as Flash 4 ActionScript. It is specially designed for mobile phone and consumer electronics devices.

• Flash Lite 1.1: All thing of Flash Lite 1.0 is supported by Flash Lite 1.1 and more one feature API.

• Flash Lite 2.0 and 2.1: It supports Flash 7 ActionScript, fscommand2 API and all of Flash Lite 1.1.

• Flash Lite 3: It supports Flash 8 ActionScript, FLV video playback and all features of Flash Lite 2.0 and 2.1.

• Flash Lite 4: Added support for Flash 10 ActionScript 3.0.

Adobe Released :

April 30, 2010
Trail version of Flash Professional CS5. Can be downloaded.

April 12, 2010
A trail version of Flash Professional CS5. Lownload was not available

November 17, 2008
SWF 10

November 11, 2008
Flash CS4 was available to download.

October 15, 2008
Flash CS4 Professional  is.

July 27, 2007
SWF 9 specs.

May 29, 2007
ActionScript Virtual Machine 2 (AVM2)

May 9, 2007
Flash CS3 trial download made available.
Trial version of CS3 made available.

April 16, 2007
Flash CS3, Trial version was not available to download.

March 31, 2006
SWF 8 specs

December 3, 2005
Macromedia is merged with Adobe.

Macromedia Released:

October 28, 2005
ASV 5.

September 16, 2005
ASV 5 Beta 4.

September 13, 2005
Flash 8 and Flash Professional 8
July 27, 2004
Flash MX 2004 7.2 updater.

November 18, 2003
SWF 7 (MX 2004) specs.

November 11, 2003
Flash MX 2004 7.0.1 updater.

September 15, 2003
ASV 4.0.

September 9, 2003
Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX professional 2004.

February 21, 2003
ASV 3.1.

October 25, 2002
SWF 6 (MX) specs.

May 16, 2002
ASV 3.0 and Demo version of ASV 3.0.

March 17, 2002
Demo version of ASV 2.5.

March 15, 2002
Flash MX.

March 14, 2002
ASV 2.5.

October 3, 2001
Demo version of ASV 2.03.

December 1, 2000
ASV 2.0.