Adobe® AIR™ Bible

Chapter 4. Crash Course in AIR Programming

AIR is likely to draw the attention of a wide array of developers and designers, including Flash, Flex, and Ajax developers, as well as possibly developers from other platforms who are not as familiar with ActionScript, MXML, and JavaScript. If you're not yet familiar with ActionScript 3.0, Flex, or Ajax, this chapter gives you a quick primer on the languages AIR currently supports, and gives insight into the multiple ways AIR can be developed.

While this chapter is not intended to be the sole source of reference for developing in Actionscript 3.0, Flex, or Ajax, it is our hope that developers new to any of these languages will be able to use it to at least get up and running while working with many of the examples throughout this book.

A closer look at ActionScript

ActionScript, the language used in Flash and Flex, has evolved significantly from its beginnings as a simple script used to animate vector graphics. ActionScript 3.0 is a fundamental evolution of the language that requires an entirely new virtual machine called ActionScript Virtual Machine 2, or AVM2. The latest Flash Player, Flash Player 9, is used for Flash and Flex and supports both the first virtual machine, AVM1, and the new ActionScript 3.0 virtual machine. ActionScript 3.0 provides a significant improvement in performance and a more mature programming model that is far better suited for rich Internet application development.

What's new in AS3

The following section details ...