Chapter 23. Knowing the Nuts and Bolts of Code
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. 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 that 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 or desktop applications, such as database-driven e-commerce product catalogs, without the need for proprietary server-side applications.
Note
For over three years, Adobe has had another tool, Flex Builder, that enables the creation of complex Flash applications and that outputs the same SWF file format that the Flash authoring tool does. Flex Builder 3 enables you to build Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) by using a markup language called ...
Get Adobe® Flash® CS4 Professional Bible now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
