Chapter 24. Knowing the Nuts and Bolts of Code

IN THIS CHAPTER

  • Describing interactive problems

  • Speaking the ActionScript language

  • Understanding the value of variables

  • Working with conditionals

For many serious Web developers, Flash's enhanced programming capabilities are the most important new feature of each product release. Just when you think they've added it all, the Adobe Flash team manages to pull more rabbits out of the hat. Now, more than ever, elements inside Flash movies can be dynamic, have properties calculated on the fly, and respond to user input. Movies can communicate with server-side applications and scripts by sending and receiving processed and raw data. What does this mean for your movies? It means you have the capability to produce truly advanced movies (such as online secure banking applications, product configurators, hotel reservation systems, Flash asteroids, a multiplayer role-playing adventure game, or a navigational interface with a memory of the user's moves, just to name a few). It also means that Flash can be used to produce complex Web applications, such as database-driven e-commerce product catalogs, without the need for proprietary server-side applications.

Note

Between Flash 8 and Flash CS3 release cycles, Adobe released Flex Builder 2. Flex Builder 2 enables you to build Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) using a markup language called MXML and a scripting layer written in ActionScript 3.0. The Flex framework is included with Flex Builder. This framework ...

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