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Body <p><a href="http://moock.org/" title="Colin Moock's website">Colin Moock</a> has written a book called <em><a href="http://moock.org/eas3/examples/" title="ActionScript 3.0 Code Examples">Essential ActionScript 3.0</a></em> and I am making it one of my goals to learn how to use as many open source languages as possible to expand on the knowledge I have gained building applications in Symphony, using XML, XSLT and CSS. I'm keenly interested in knowing how the open source <a href="http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flex/3/releasenotes_flex3_sdk.html" title="Flex 3 SDK Release Notes">Flex SDK 3</a> can be used to create Rich Internet Applications that integrate with applications like Symphony, built on open source standards such as XML and XSLT.</p> <p>I will be adding to this document as I go.</p> <h3>Getting Started</h3> <p>First, I need a compiler. For whatever reason, I cannot use Adobe Flash CS3 at home, even though I have a license that allows having Flash installed at home and at work. For whatever reason, the CS3 install I have at home just stopped working. Strange. I'll have to reinstall at some point. For now, I'm going to use the <a href="http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK">Flex 3 SDK</a> to compile ActionScript from source. I have a previous version of Flex, the Flex 2 SDK, but I'm going to download the latest Software Developers Kit to see how compatible Colin's book will be with the latest version of Flex. ActionScript 3.0 has not changed, so I don't foresee a problem.</p> <p>Adobe has provided some documentation on <a href="http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/?tab:quickstart=1">Getting Started with Flex 3 SDK</a> in the Adobe Flex Developer Center. The <a href="http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Developer+Documentation">Developer Documentation for Adobe Flex</a> is also available at <a href="http://opensource.adobe.com/">Adobe Open Source</a>.</p> <p>To start with, I have downloaded the Flex 3 SDK and installed it where I can easily access it on the command line:</p> <code><pre>~/flex_sdk_3</pre></code> <p>I'm using Mac OS X 10.5.3, so that means I have installed the Flex 3 SDK at the root of my user directory:</p> <code><pre>/Users/stephen/flex_sdk_3</pre></code> <p>I also followed the <a href="http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flex/3/releasenotes_flex3_sdk.html">recommendation</a> to <a href="http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_14157">uninstall the Flash Player</a> before installing the player supplied with the SDK.</p> <code><pre>~/flex_sdk_3/runtimes/player/mac/Install Flash Player 9 UB.dmg</pre></code> <p>I have chosen to use <a href="http://www.panic.com/coda/" title="One-Window Web Development for Mac OS X">Panic's Coda</a> as my IDE for developing ActionScript. It is a text editor with some nice extras, including a built in Terminal and web browser based on Apples's <a href="http://webkit.org/">WebKit</a> project used to build Safari. There's no reason you couldn't use free tools: Terminal, Safari and <a href="http://barebones.com/products/textwrangler/">TextWrangler</a>, for instance. But I love working with Panic's well-designed tools, such as Coda and Transmit. <h3>Chapter 1: Core Concepts</h3> <p>In the first chapter, Colin provides an overview of the tools for writing ActionScript code: text editor, Adobe Flex Builder, and Adobe Flash; describes the Flash Client Runtime Environment, Compilation. Then, he jumps right into a step-by-step process of creating a virtual zoo example program to teach the core concepts about:</p> <ul> <li>Packages</li> <li>Classes</li> <li>Access Control Modifiers</li> <li>Constructor Methods</li> <li>Objects</li> <li>Variables and Values</li> <li>Constructor Parameters and Arguments</li> <li>Expressions</li> <li>Instance Variables</li> <li>Instance Methods</li> <li>Method Return Values</li> </ul>

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