Six reasons to use ActionScript 3.0
1. Your skills will be in high demand
This, in my opinion, is the main reason anyone who currently works or is planning to work as a Flash developer should switch to the new language. All major Flash work is now exclusively being built in ActionScript 3.0. You just don't see many jobs looking for ActionScript 2.0 skills. So if you plan on working with Flash in your job, learning ActionScript 3.0 is essential.
2. Everything you build will be faster
Developers who have been working with Flash for a while have often been frustrated that our new, super-cool idea just couldn't run smoothly because of the limitations of Flash Player. ActionScript 3.0 offers up to a 10-fold increase in performance over previous versions of the language. In some cases, the performance has increased even more. This means you can control more objects on the Stage at the same time. If you want your project to look and perform at its best, moving to ActionScript 3.0 is the ultimate way to achieve this goal.
3. There's an abundance of new APIs
As Flash developers, we love nothing more than getting new toys to integrate into our projects. ActionScript 3.0 includes hundreds of new APIs for working with things like XML, regular expressions, and binary sockets. Even better, the whole language has been reorganized into packages and namespaces that make it much easier to find specific language features. When you use ActionScript 3.0, your Flash toolbox is not only much fuller, it is also better organized.
4. The display list rocks
One of the biggest changes in ActionScript 3.0 is the way Flash handles visual objects in a movie. In previous versions of the language, it was practically a black art to manipulate the display order (depth) of the items in a Flash movie. A large number of hacks and workarounds existed that didn't make any sense to beginners starting to use the language. For instance, it was common practice to place visual assets at an extremely high depth in order to keep them on top of everything else in a movie. This led to a lot of problems in larger projects and required a lot of manual depth management work. The new display list in ActionScript 3.0 is a straightforward mechanism that handles how visual assets are rendered in your movie. Once you start using it, you'll wonder how you ever developed a project without it.
5. The object-oriented structure is better
Developers particularly love the improved object-oriented structure of ActionScript 3.0. It includes things like runtime typing, sealed classes, packages, namespaces, and an overhauled event model. Programming in ActionScript 3.0 is on the same level as writing in other high-level languages like Java and C#. The new features in ActionScript 3.0 also make your code more modular, readable and extendable. Some of these features may not be used much, if at all, by interactive designers—but it is good to know that if you want to get into more advanced programming someday, the language structure is there to support you.
6. It's more enjoyable to work with ActionScript 3.0
This may sound subjective, but I believe it is absolutely true. Ask anyone who knows ActionScript 3.0 to go back and program a project in ActionScript 2.0 and they will surely cringe at the idea. Previous versions of the language were filled with so many bugs, hacks, and workarounds that working in ActionScript 3.0 seems almost too easy in comparison. ActionScript 3.0 does take a bit of getting used to, but the rewards are well worth the effort.
Original Post : http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/six_reasons_as3.html
This, in my opinion, is the main reason anyone who currently works or is planning to work as a Flash developer should switch to the new language. All major Flash work is now exclusively being built in ActionScript 3.0. You just don't see many jobs looking for ActionScript 2.0 skills. So if you plan on working with Flash in your job, learning ActionScript 3.0 is essential.
2. Everything you build will be faster
Developers who have been working with Flash for a while have often been frustrated that our new, super-cool idea just couldn't run smoothly because of the limitations of Flash Player. ActionScript 3.0 offers up to a 10-fold increase in performance over previous versions of the language. In some cases, the performance has increased even more. This means you can control more objects on the Stage at the same time. If you want your project to look and perform at its best, moving to ActionScript 3.0 is the ultimate way to achieve this goal.
3. There's an abundance of new APIs
As Flash developers, we love nothing more than getting new toys to integrate into our projects. ActionScript 3.0 includes hundreds of new APIs for working with things like XML, regular expressions, and binary sockets. Even better, the whole language has been reorganized into packages and namespaces that make it much easier to find specific language features. When you use ActionScript 3.0, your Flash toolbox is not only much fuller, it is also better organized.
4. The display list rocks
One of the biggest changes in ActionScript 3.0 is the way Flash handles visual objects in a movie. In previous versions of the language, it was practically a black art to manipulate the display order (depth) of the items in a Flash movie. A large number of hacks and workarounds existed that didn't make any sense to beginners starting to use the language. For instance, it was common practice to place visual assets at an extremely high depth in order to keep them on top of everything else in a movie. This led to a lot of problems in larger projects and required a lot of manual depth management work. The new display list in ActionScript 3.0 is a straightforward mechanism that handles how visual assets are rendered in your movie. Once you start using it, you'll wonder how you ever developed a project without it.
5. The object-oriented structure is better
Developers particularly love the improved object-oriented structure of ActionScript 3.0. It includes things like runtime typing, sealed classes, packages, namespaces, and an overhauled event model. Programming in ActionScript 3.0 is on the same level as writing in other high-level languages like Java and C#. The new features in ActionScript 3.0 also make your code more modular, readable and extendable. Some of these features may not be used much, if at all, by interactive designers—but it is good to know that if you want to get into more advanced programming someday, the language structure is there to support you.
6. It's more enjoyable to work with ActionScript 3.0
This may sound subjective, but I believe it is absolutely true. Ask anyone who knows ActionScript 3.0 to go back and program a project in ActionScript 2.0 and they will surely cringe at the idea. Previous versions of the language were filled with so many bugs, hacks, and workarounds that working in ActionScript 3.0 seems almost too easy in comparison. ActionScript 3.0 does take a bit of getting used to, but the rewards are well worth the effort.
Original Post : http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/six_reasons_as3.html
Comments
Post a Comment