What is ActionScript?
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Have you never used ActionScript before, and want to learn? This article will help you get started. Have you used only ActionScript 1.0, and wonder what changed with version 2.0? Keep reading to find out.
ActionScript is the object-oriented programming (OOP) language you use in your flash movies to add interactivity to your applications, whether it may be a simple animation or a complex enterprise rich internet application. The object-oriented programming (OOP) features in ActionScript 2.0 are based on the ECMAScript 4 Netscape Proposal ( www.mozilla.org/js/language/es4/index.html). Because the ECMA-4 proposal is not yet a standard, and because it is still changing, ActionScript 2.0 does not conform exactly to this specification.
ActionScript Basics
Syntax:
ActionScript has its own rules of grammar and punctuation that determine which characters and words are used to create meaning and in which order they can be written. For example, in English, a period ends a sentence; in ActionScript, a semicolon ends a statement.
var name:String = "Jhon";
The above statement is a variable declaration of string data type.
ActionScript has syntax rules that you must follow to create scripts that can compile and run correctly.
ActionScript 2.0 is case sensitive, so the variables "name" and "Name" are different.
In ActionScript, dot syntax is used ( .) to access properties or methods belonging to an object or movie clip. It is also used to identify the target path to a movie clip, variable, function, or object.
trace( rectangle_mc._width);
The above statement traces the width of the movieclip "rectangle_mc" where "rectangle_mc" is the instance name of the Movieclip.
Note: trace statement is used to output data in the output panel, mainly used for debugging purposes and these statements only execute during authoring.
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