Flash CS3: Guilty as Charged

Colin Moock's article at Inside RIA, titled 'The Charges Against ActionScript 3.0' is a must read, especially if you are a Flash developer still trying to migrate to AS3 and find it hard.

The article is really about shortcomings of Flash CS3, rather than AS3, and it has good tips for AS1/AS2 developers.

I agree with 99.9% of what Colin says there.

AS3 made Flash harder to learn. If you are not a Java programmer, I think you'll agree.

I personally don't like Java or ECMAScript, not any more than I like XML. But sometimes you have no choice and all in all, AS3 is a fine scripting language, clearly better than AS2 but with a steeper learning curve, for which most Flash developers don't have the time for.

[I had very high hopes for AS3 until I saw the compiler done in Java. I hoped it would be done in AS3. I still hope there will be an AS3 compiler written in AS3 soon, all Java will be ditched from Flash platform and people will call AS3 the better language and Flash as the platform that replaced Java, accomplished what Java never was able to do (write once, run everywhere, for starters)].

With AS3, Flash got closer to Java developer types, but became harder for the Flash developer types. My understanding was that Flex would handle the Java developer types and RIA end, Flash (the authoring tool) would stay as easy as before. This didn't happen.

One commenter says:

':) this was the same thing we talk to colleagues about the changes to AS3. The think we do is to make some wrapper object witch gives me some of the good old functionality from AS2.'

Colin's article has a getURL replacement AS3 function, which I will start using immediately. Colin says on()/onClipEvent() functions should be back (in an improved form) and Flash should convert to AS3 when exporting. I think that should be the way to go. Flash CS3 already converts timeline code to a class behind the scenes, why not exploit this approach more? Flash, with AS3, should be as easy to use as before, as much as possible. Otherwise lots of Flash developers will be out. (Sure, there may be other, easier to use tools but if Flash authoring tool loses ground, it can't be good).

Another commenter says:

'I think most of us who do AS3 40hrs a week for a living just wrote our own libraries to make this stuff easy again.'

'I don't want to switch to Flex.  If I have to go to flex why not just use silverlight.'