I love Actionscript 3
After spending some time with AS3 (almost a year) I can now make that (weird) statement. For those that have no idea what I’m talking about, let me make a brief introduction:
Flash, the major player in online rich-media, started as an animation-drawing tool and not a platform for full-blown apps. It took years of effort from the software developers to get rid of its ancestry - and all those years actionscript sat on top of the drawing platform, more in an assisting role rather than a proper scripting language. But now it’s a reality. It has a learning curve over the previous actionscript 2 and that is frustrating at first but it’s all for the best.
Experienced programmers appreciate the new syntax and object oriented structure, bringing the platform up to date with other “proper” scripting environments. But for the non-coders the new structure just seems more logical. And although you can do most of the things you want with AS2, noone can deny the fact that AS3 is waaay faster.
That fact made (finally) possible the implementation of 3D graphics in flash. A series of engines have been created for flash, nowhere near software 3D engines but it’s a start…
Here comes the show off part so feast your eyes with some 3D goodness:
More resources on Flash 3D:
- http://drawlogic.com/category/3d-engines/
- http://blog.papervision3d.org/
- http://blog.alternativaplatform.com/en/
- http://papervision2.com/
- http://www.cs54.com/blog/?cat=15
I envy the new developers that start learning AS3 straight away. They don’t have the baggage of the previous experience of the more limited previous versions of Flash. But it’s a state of mind I guess to simply discard the past and embrace the possibilities of the future.
