-------------------------------- Title -------------------------------- Essential ActionScript 3.0 -------------------------------- Description -------------------------------- [Colin Moock](http://moock.org/ "Colin Moock's website")has written a book called _[Essential ActionScript 3.0](http://moock.org/eas3/examples/ "ActionScript 3.0 Code Examples")_ 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 [Flex SDK 3](http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flex/3/releasenotes_flex3_sdk.html "Flex 3 SDK Release Notes") can be used to create Rich Internet Applications that integrate with applications like Symphony, built on open source standards such as XML and XSLT. -------------------------------- Body -------------------------------- ### Getting Started 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 [Flex 3 SDK](http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK) 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. Adobe has provided some documentation on [Getting Started with Flex 3 SDK](http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/?tab:quickstart=1) in the Adobe Flex Developer Center. The [Developer Documentation for Adobe Flex](http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Developer+Documentation) is also available at [Adobe Open Source](http://opensource.adobe.com/). To start with, I have downloaded the Flex 3 SDK and installed it where I can easily access it on the command line: ~/flex_sdk_3 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: /Users/stephen/flex_sdk_3 I also followed the [recommendation](http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flex/3/releasenotes_flex3_sdk.html) to [uninstall the Flash Player](http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_14157) before installing the player supplied with the SDK. ~/flex_sdk_3/runtimes/player/mac/Install Flash Player 9 UB.dmg I have chosen to use [Panic’s Coda](http://www.panic.com/coda/ "One-Window Web Development for Mac OS X") 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 [WebKit](http://webkit.org/) project used to build Safari. There’s no reason you couldn’t use free tools: Terminal, Safari and [TextWrangler](http://barebones.com/products/textwrangler/), for instance. But I love working with Panic’s well-designed tools, such as Coda and Transmit. ### Chapter 1: Core Concepts 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: * Packages * Classes * Access Control Modifiers * Constructor Methods * Objects * Variables and Values * Constructor Parameters and Arguments * Expressions * Instance Variables * Instance Methods * Method Return Values -------------------------------- Date -------------------------------- 29 Jun 2008 6:08am -------------------------------- Section -------------------------------- Journal -------------------------------- Category -------------------------------- Technology -------------------------------- Tags -------------------------------- ActionScript, Flex SDK