This is a translated version of the French book called “Pratique d'ActionScript 3� shared and released here by his author, Thibault Imbert, System Engineer at Adobe France.

Flash is now a well known and recognised tool, allowing both professionals and novices to develop applications combining various media: video, image, sound, webcams, etc. One of its main advantages is that it is well integrated into different browsers and existing machines (98%). Flash has evolved enormously since its early days and continues to constantly improve its language ActionScript.

Here is a collection of articles to help you use Flash and ActionScript.

• History
• 10 reasons to code in ActionScript 3
• Tools
• The Flash platform

• ActionScript 3 language
• Virtual machines
• Dynamic translation
• Management of types upon execution
• Execution errors
• New primitive types
• Default values
• New composite types
• New keywords
• Functions
• Execution context
• Loops
• Enrichment of the array class
• Garbage collector
• Best practices
• Other subtleties

• History
• A new event model
• Event sub-classes
• The power of weak coupling
• Notification order
• Weak references
• Subtleties

• Graphic classes
• The display list
• Instancing graphic classes
• Adding display objects
• Container reallocation
• Internal list of child objects
• Accessing display objects
• Deleting display objects
• Depth collapse
• Stacking management of display objects
• Depth change
• Deactivation of graphic objects
• How the player head works
• Subtleties of the stage property
• Subtleties of the root property
• _Levels

• Symbol types
• Instancing symbols with programming
• Displaying a bitmap image
• The Sprite symbol
• Definition of code in a symbol

• Concept
• The capture phase
• Optimising the code with the capture phase
• The target phase
• Intervening on propagation
• The bubbling phase
• Listening to multiple phases
• Deletion of listeners

• Interactivity with simplebutton
• Creating a dynamic menu
• Traps of the garbage collector
• Adding the behavior button
• Focus management
• More effects on the menu!
• Coordinates
• Global event
• Putting things into practice
• Display updates
• Keyboard management
• Superposition
• The event.resize event

• A new way of thinking
• Encapsulation
• Use of the static attribute
• The PlayerManager class
• Inheritance
• Typecasting
• Override

• The value of extending native classes
• Extending non-graphic classes
• Extending graphic classes
• Accessing the Stage object
• Adding functionalities
• Reusing code
• The dynamic class
• A real constructor
• Creating dynamic buttons

• History
• The EventDispatcher class
• Extending the EventDispatcher
• Storing the EventDispatcher

• The value of the document class
• The mainTimeline class
• The document class
• Automatic declaration of instances
• Adding functionality
• Initialisation of the application

• Bitmaps and vectorials
• Colours
• The BitmapData class
• Encoding colours
• Managing resources with the profiler
• The bitmap class
• Liberating resources
• Images in the library
• Painting in pixels
• Smoothing
• Bitmap caching
• Filtering a vectorial element
• Bitmap rendering of vectorial objects
• Optimising performances

• The Loader class
• The LoaderInfo class
• Interacting with the content
• Creating a gallery
• Preloading content
• Interrupting loading
• Communicating between two animations
• Security model in Flash player
• Loading context
• Bypassing security restrictions
• Shared library
• Deactivating a loaded animation
• AVM1 and AVM2 communication

• The URLLoader class
• Loading of data and security
• Loading binary data
• The concept of sending data
• Downloading a file
• Going further

• Container and content
• Passing variables
• Calling a function
• The API ExternalInterface

• Text in Flash
• Formatting text
• Modifying the content of a text field
• The TextEvent.LINK event
• Loading external content
• Exporting a font in the animation
• Detecting text coordinates
• Creating a text editor

• Reading sound
• Video in Flash

• A universal bridge
• Creating an XML socket server
• The socket class

• The technology
• Bridge remoting
• The service
• Security
• The service class

• Binary coding
• The byteArray class
• Compressing data
• Saving a binary feed
• Generating a PDF

• Decomposing the application
• Managing access paths
• Using shared libraries