flash as3_flash_platform

By the term ‘Flash platform’ we mean the ensemble of technologies which can be used with Flash player.

We can divide the Flash platform into three categories:

• Flash player: this means different players including Flash player, Flash player integrated into AIR and Flash Lite (although Flash Lite is not yet compatible with ActionScript 3).
• Development tools: Flex Builder and Flash CS3 are the two author environments which allow you to produce Flash content. It is worth noting that you can also use the Eclipse environment and the SDK of Flex and AIR.
• Frameworks: Flex is a framework developed to ease rich application development. Thanks to AIR these applications can be taken out of the navigator and be used on the desktop.

Each development tool or framework responds to specific needs per profile.

A designer/developer will be interested in the animated development interfaces and in websites built in Flash CS3. The knowledge of an environment such as Flash CS3 will also allow him to develop reuseable components in Flex and AIR.

A developer will prefer a development environment like Flex Builder. The applications produced with the Flex framework will be different and can be easily deployed on the desktop thanks to AIR.

It is worth noting that the examples in these articles can be used in Flash CS3, Flex and AIR

In order to start this exploration of ActionScript 3, we will first look at the different new aspects of the language.

On to the next article: Language and API