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1.0. Introduction

Using ActionScript, you can create Flash applications that do just about anything you can imagine. But before launching into the vast possibilities, let's start with the basic foundation. The good news is that ActionScript commands follow a well-defined pattern, sharing similar syntax, structure, and concepts. Mastering the fundamental grammar puts you well on the way to mastering ActionScript.

This chapter addresses the frequent tasks and problems that relate to core ActionScript knowledge. Whether you are a beginner or masteror somewhere in betweenthese recipes help you handle situations that arise in every ActionScript project.

This book assumes that you have obtained a copy of Flex Builder 2 and have successfully installed it on your computer. It's also helpful if you have some experience using a previous version of ActionScript as well.

When you launch Flex Builder 2, the Eclipse IDE should start up and present you with a welcome screen. You are presented with various options to get started and more information about Flex and ActionScript 3, such as links to documentation, tutorials, and more. You can close that screen by clicking on the small "x" on its tab. Now you are in the Eclipse IDE itself, ready to start coding; but where do you go from here?

Flex Builder 2 allows you to create three kinds of projects: a Flex project, Flex Library project, and an ActionScript project. The difference is that Flex projects have access to the entire Flex Framework, which includes all of the Flex components, layout management, transitions, styles, themes, data binding, and all the other stuff that goes into making a Flex Rich Internet Application. Flex applications are written in MXML (a form of XML), which describes the layout and relationship between components. They use ActionScript for their business logic. Although you can use the ActionScript knowledge you learn from here in Flex applications you write, this book concentrates on ActionScript projects exclusively.

Now, if you are familiar with Flash 8 or earlier versions of the Flash IDE, you may be a bit baffled the first time you open up Flex Builder 2. There is no timeline, no library, no drawing tools or color pickers. You'll be doing pretty much everything by code alone, which is why it is called an ActionScript project, rather than a Flash project. So we'll first cover how to create a project and then to get you started with entering your first ActionScript statements.


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