More than a year has passed since Flash CS3 was released to widely positive reviews, but many Flash users are still frustrated by some of the workflow changes introduced by ActionScript 3.0. The truly problematic changes are relatively few, but together they have a deep effect on the typical Flash user's daily job. In the spirit of working toward solutions, and of giving a formal voice to the collective grumbling of everyday Flashers, I have published an article called The Charges Against ActionScript 3.0 on O'Reilly's InsideRIA.
The article discusses the following issues:
1. The removal of on()/onClipEvent() from Flash CS3 makes creating simple interactivity hard.
2. Getting rid of loaded .swf files is hard.
3. Casting DisplayObject.parent makes controlling parent movie clips hard.
4. The removal of getURL() makes linking hard.
5. The removal of loadMovie() makes loading .swf files and images hard.
6. ActionScript 3.0's additional errors make coding cumbersome.
7. Referring to library symbols dynamically is unintuitive.
8. Adding custom functionality to manually created text fields, to all movie clips, or to all buttons is cumbersome.
9. The removal of duplicateMovieClip() makes cloning a MovieClip instance (really) hard.
You can read the article in its entirety here.
Posted by moock at July 16, 2008 12:14 AM