[UPDATE: The spots filled up. Registration is now closed. Next stops: Munich, Amsterdam, and London...]
i've just learned that registration for the chicago stop on my actionscript 3.0 training tour has been re-opened. apparently some new spots have opened up. the event is on december 3rd, 2007.
>> get details and register at www.adobeas3tour.com
hope to see you there!
if you just can't wait for ECMAScript 4 (aka the next version of ActionScript and JavaScript) to be implemented in Flash Player and Web browsers, you can already experiment with it today using the ECMAScript 4 Reference Implementation.
the Reference Implementation is actually very easy to set up and use. to get started with it, watch John Resig's short video explaining basics of installation, and compiling and running programs.
>> view ECMAScript 4 Reference Implementation video
of course, the Reference Implementation doesn't include the Flash Player API or a Web browser API (e.g., the DOM), so you can't actually create any visuals with your code, but you can try out the new core language features, such as block scope (let), multimethods/method overloading (generic functions), and iterators.
is the future of ECMAScript 4 (i.e., javascript and actionscript) based on technical or political considerations? judging by the recent exchange on the es4-discuss mailing list, there's a good helping of both.
if you have some (well, a lot of) time on your hands, and you're curious to see some not-so-internal debate on the future of ECMAScript 4 between Microsoft, Yahoo!, Adobe, Mozilla, Opera, "and others," start here:
>> read Fwd: [TLUG]: ECMAScript ("Javascript") Version 4 - FALSE ALARM
there's some skillful (and at times entertaining) rhetoric employed by some involved--particularly brendan eich, the creator of javascript. see this post.
a few quotations from brendan, to give you the flavour of the discussion:
~"I created JS, so I can speak more authentically than whoever was quoted above: I love JS too, quirks and all, but the idea that it should be kept small, like a Toy Poodle, while giant companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo! are purveying and propagating onto the Web proprietary Rottweiler languages -- JS-beating programming languages with ES4-like features -- and even hyping such languages against JS (see the rigged C# chess demo from Mix07 that MS wrote to show up the JScript version of the same program: http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/pictures/mix-chess.png) -- this is a breathtaking imposture."
~"The insinuation that someone was passing a self-described overview off as a spec is not a "fact", it's a lie from the anonymous miscreant."
~"(I stopped reading /. long ago, as having my own small children to look after involved less chin-wiping and was more edifying and entertaining. :-)"
~"kris zyp wrote:
> I think that if even 25% subset of ES4 was uniformly
> implemented in all browsers in 10 years, web developers
> would be vastly further along than if the 100% of ES4
> was implemented in half the browsers.
Brendan replied:
You're kidding, right? Ten years is far too long, and there's no coherent 25% -- a lot of ES4 depends on the type system. Would you cut that and try to stitch the remaining pieces back together? King Solomon only offered to bisect a child to find the true mother. Quartering was not a good idea even for that purpose. Anyway, Microsoft is now the avowed anti-mother of ES4, so you are only going to help mutilate or kill ES4 with this kind of bargaining. "
the debate also spilled over into the blog world and the press. here's Microsoft's Chris Wilson's position (he's the Platform Architect of the Internet Explorer Platform) and Brendan Eich's response.
if you have time to wade through the entire discussion, you'll stumble upon many interesting links. have fun...
