Often the hardest part of changing technologies is language syntax differences. This new article provides Java developers with a transition guide to Actionscript which forms the foundation of Flex.
Let’s face it: The client has not been a friendly place for Java programmers. Java technology on the client with applets, Swing, and JavaFX has had limited success. JavaScript, despite its name, is almost nothing like the Java language. And Adobe Flash—well, it’s just like JavaScript. Or is it? It might have been the case that Flash was like JavaScript a couple of years ago, but with the advent of ActionScript 3, a lot has changed. And I think you’ll find a lot to like.First, ActionScript—the programming language for Adobe Flex and Flash—is now strongly typed. It also has first-class object orientation, including classes and interfaces. It has extras that you won’t find in Java—notably, get and set functions for properties and a language extension called ECMAScript for XML (E4X), which turns any XML document into objects that you can reference with dot operators, just like regular objects.
This article takes you through the basics of ActionScript 3 and shows how it compares with the Java environment you’re used to. By the end, you should have given up any preconceptions you may have had about ActionScript...