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flashapache-flexactionscript-3eclipse-plugin

What is the relationship between Flex, Flash and ActionScript 3.0

I'm working on a project that uses ActionScript 3.0 with Flex SDKs. The project is built using the Eclipse IDE. I wonder if the Flex SDKs are used to support ActionScript 3.0 in Eclipse?

What is the relationship between ActionScript 3.0 and Flash?

Solution

  • Its a good question, and one of which many people tend to be confused with.

    - Flash

    The all singing, all dancing graphics and vector stuff you'll be aware of - This is primarily deemed as the visual stuff. When you open Adobe Flash, its an interface to build animated stuff turned into binary magic

    - Actionscript 3

    This began life as a small variable like assistance for flash graphicy stuff. It has evolved (as you're aware) into the full blown language based upon the ECMA standard. This is why its very similar to languages like Java and JS

    - Flex

    May become confusing from here.

    Flex has many forms.

    1. Its an XML style language of which allows you to build up the 'flash' stuff via a markup language, instead of drawing it all yourself.
    2. This begins to become a stable component set based on the MXML (Macromedia XML) syntax.
    3. Flex wraps pretty much the entire AS3 language with this MXML syntax and thus becomes a framework

    Its become the norm to have Flex as your frontend markup, tied into AS3 logic.

    Whats surprising to many people, even those in the trade. Flex MXML is compiled down at compile runtime time to raw AS3 code and thats used when the SWF is deployed. - *edit:

    This is why its just like an interpreted language,

    when building an Flash app you may use a combination of these elements.

    Primarily AS3 and Flash live hand in hand. AS3 and Flex is again a marriage. You can create Flex components in flash

    To be made aware. This should not be confused with the Flex IDE - which is not the framework. Adobe's newest rendition of the software has been branded 'Flash Builder' to thwart confusion.