Flash and AS3 links

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Introduction

This page contains some general Flash and AS3 links

See also:

• Flash - Entry point for Flash tutorials and software links
• Flash ActionScript 3 overview - A high-level overview of the AS3 world.
• Actionscript 3 - Entry point for Actionscript tutorials
• Adobe Flex - Entry point for Flex

General Flash/AS3/Flex links

• Waldron, Rick (2000). The Flash History. Flashmagazine
• Adobe Flash (Wikipedia)
• Adobe Flash Player (Wikipedia)
• Flash Video (Wikipedia, overview of the technical format)

Flash developer web sites

(only a few, see also the tutorials sections)

• Kirupa
• FlashKit, A Flash Developer Resource Site

Flash links @ Adobe

• Adobe Flash Player (list of current player version and diagnostic of yours).
• Adobe Flash Developer Center (includes tutorials, including video tutorials plus related resources)
  • Testing and usability (Adobe Flash Developer Center).
• Flash CS3 resources @ Adobe Resource Center. The central starting point for Flash and ActionScript programmers (manuals).
• Developer Connection: Getting started with Flash CS4
• Developer Connection: Learn Flash (CS5) @ Adobe Developper Connection.
• Adobe Flex Developer Center Contains tutorials, manuals and additional resources (the equivalent of the Flash development center)
• ActionScript Technology Center Includes tutorials.
• Adobe AIR Developer Center for Flex. Air is a system or framework for developing Rich internet applications with Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax).

Forums

• Kirupa Forums. This web site includes a series of popular Flash and AS forums.

Adobe AS3/Flex links

• Adobe Flex Developer Center Contains tutorials, manuals and additional resources (the equivalent of the Flash development center)
• ActionScript Technology Center Includes tutorials.
• Adobe AIR Developer Center for Flex. Air is a system or framework for developing Rich internet applications with Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax).

News / Feeds aggregators

• Actionscript, Haxe, Neko, Flex, Air feeds

References, documentation, and manuals on-line

Cheatsheets

• actionscriptcheatsheet.com. Several excellent ActionScript cheatsheets.
  • ActionScript 3.0 cheatsheet.

• Atp Ria Guide.pdf. (Adobe) This 29 p. very short ActionScript reference for rich Internet application development provides an alphabetical reference for all native ActionScript APIs for the Adobe technology platform runtimes: Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR—as well as the Adobe Flex framework APIs.

Language References and Live Docs

Tips: Also have a look at the buil-in CS3/4/5 Help. It's not really obvious to find things at Adobe. There is much more documentation that one might think at first glance. Here are just a few:

CS3 / CS4 /CS5

• Using Flash CS3 Professional. The starting point for beginners and graphics designers.

• Adobe Flash CS4 Professional (just the starting point)
  • Using Adobe Flash CS4 Professional]

• Adobe Flash Professional CS5 (starting point)

AS3

Flash 9

• Flash 9.0 documentation. Includes several "books" on ActionScript and AS components for more advanced users, e.g.
  • Using ActionScript 3.0 Components
  • Programming ActionScript 3.0

• ActionScript 3.0 Language and Components Reference @ Adobe livedocs. This is the reference manual for programmers.

• Programming Actionscript 3.0, Adobe Press, @ Adobe livedocs (814 pages PDF manual)

Flash 10

• Programming ActionScript 3.0

• Using ActionScript 3.0 Components

• ActionScript 3.0 Language and Components Reference

Flash 10.1 - combined reference for CS5 / Flex 4/ etc. (you can filter)

• ActionScript 3.0 Reference for the Adobe Flash Platform

Flex

• Programming ActionScript 3.0 @ Flex LiveDocs. Describes specific usage of the ActionScript 3.0 language and core Flash Player API. This is what beginning AS/Flex programmers should read.

• Adobe Flex 2.0.1 Language Reference

• Flex Live Docs (for ActionScript 3 programming). For programmers only.

Flash Tutorials and examples

This section only should index good and free tutorials. No junk indexes with nothing but advertisements. There is a problem with Flash Version. Various Flash versions are considerably different and most sites include older stuff...

Good Flash examples

demos

• Andre Michelle Flash Lab
• Jim's Flash Bestiary

Artsy websites

• Yugop (Abstract animation art)

Flash trailers for company websites / advertizements

• hillmancurtis (Search a bit, e.g. on May 2010 is was here.

Flash comics

• Angry Alien (30 sec. Bunnies

Flash games

• "Flash+games" Google search(There are many)

Web sites with tutorials

• Both just links or "real" repositories
• Since there exist very little Flash 9-only collections, I also include sites with older information. There is quite a huge difference between ActionScript 2 and 3, but drawing and the elements of the Flash environment (timeline, etc.) are not that different.

Collections - both text and videos

• Adobe Flash Developer Center. Includes some tutorials, including video tutorials

• Oman3D. Contains both good text and video tutorials (the latter from learnflash.com).

• Steve tutes (good, but Flash 8)

• FlZone.net has a tutorial section with ratings (links to other sites)

• The best Flash game creation tutorial sites

• Flalog, self-described as Flash Actionscript Tutorial Solution Experience

Collections - mostly video

• Video tutorials at Adobe

• Wikivid Flash. Index of Video Tutorials (mostly Flash 8, but CS3 is similar) from the whole web. Probably the biggest index of training videos.

• cartoonsmart.com/ Includes three good Flash video tutorials, e.g. shape tweening and a button tutorial.

• LearnFlash.com. (Some good free ones, scroll down, for more registration is needed)

• GotoAndLearn, a long list of video tutorials.

Collections - mostly text tutorials

• lukamaras.com Probably one of the best short tutorials site (mostly Flash MX/Flash 8)

• Flash/ActionScript Tutorials at Kirupa. Gook, but mostly < Flash 9

• WebWasp (some content is free, *.fla files are sold)

• Webdeveloper notes

• W3School Flash Tutorial. Short step-by-step tutorials.

• ToxicLab.org. About 99 little Flash tutorials submitted by various people. The ones I have seen are short and nice.

Collections - to sort out

• cbtcafe flash tutorials

• EchoEcho.com Flash Tutorials (including drawing, tweening and buttons, etc.)

• Flashkit.com (A Flash Developer Resource Site)

• Find "Adobe Flash CS3" on YouTube.

• Flash Tutorial at webworksite (For Flash 5, but still useful).

• Flash Valley

• Flash Kit Index of Tutorials (lots of outdated ones too).

• Netdiver Flashware

• Tutorom.com. For now only a tutorial on Flex or some old versions of Flash. Expected to see AS3 tutorials appear in the near future (the site manager is fond of Flex).

• Flash Tutorials @ smartWebby. I haven't tried any of them, no idea what they are worth.

• Flash @ TutorialsOutpost. I haven't tried yet. Not clear whether covers CS3.

• Subsites of http://about.com, e.g. webdesign and [http:animation.about.com animation] have several flash related resources. You need to search ...

Recommended introductory CS3 tutorials

Basics (graphics and animation)

??

ActionScript 2.0

• Simple Design Patterns in Adobe Flash MX by Peter Parente. ActionScript 2.0

ActionScript 3.0

• Getting Started with ActionScript 3.0 in Adobe Flash CS3

CS4 tutorials

CS4 introduction

• Introducing Adobe Flash CS4 Professional by Doug Winnie
• Video tutorials at Adobe TV has some CS4 video tutorials

ActionScript 3.0

• Flash CS4 Tutorial : Using the drawTriangles method to render 3D objects

Flash CS3/4/5 Books

• Veer, E.A. Vander and Chris Grover (2007). The Missing Manual series.
  • CS3 ISBN 0596510446 (Daniel K. Schneider used this in class, ok for drawing, no ActionScript)
  • CS4 ISBN 0596522940
  • CS5 ISBN 978-1449380250

Flash/AS3 Books

• Gary Rosenzweig, Flash Game University, Que (1st Ed.). ISBN 0789737027. All code in actionscript 3. So far the best beginner's text I found. Environment is CS3 (also can be used with CS4 and CS5) - Daniel K. Schneider 10:16, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Academic Flash courses

(should include lecture notes or Slides, plus examples)

• Introduction to Flash, Marie Taylor-Harper (Advanced Flash, under preparation ?)

Actionscript 3.0 and Flex tutorials

Tools

• Community @ FlashDevelop.org. This forum provides support for the popular free Flashdevelop (ActionScript) editor.

Rapid Overviews/Presentations

• Grossman, Gary and Huang, Emmy (2006). ActionScript 3.0 overview, Adobe.
• ActionScript (Wikipedia)
• ActionScript 3 in Flash CS3 by mindshare studio

Migrating from AS2 to AS3

• Understanding the changes in the display API in ActionScript 3.0 (short example code comparison)
• ActionScript 2.0 Migration (Adobe). This list list is huge :)

Java vs Actionscript 3

• Comparing the syntax of Java 5 and ActionScript 3 @ faratasystems
• Object-Oriented programming in ActionScript 3 vs Java @ faratasystems

General AS 3 Tutorials

• Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) with ActionScript by Richard Baldwin. This is a full open contents textbook for people who already are familiar with basic programming contructs. HTML and PDF. Technology used: Flash Builder 4 and FlashDevelop.

• Adobe's Developer Center includes many "quickstart" articles but also more substantial tutorials and finally book excerpts. Examples:
  • Filtering XML data in Flash applications using ECMAScript for XML
  • Filtering and formatting data in the DataGrid component
  • ActionScript and object-oriented programming (several good tutorials at Adobe's Flash Developer Center)
  • ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook excerpts: From custom classes to the rendering model (Several free chapters of this book)
  • Migrating your Flash applications to ActionScript 3.0

• Getting Started with ActionScript 3.0 in Adobe Flash CS3

• Tutorials at ActionScript.org has several action script tutorials, e.g.
  • Getting started with Actionscript 3

• ActionScript 3 Tutorials (Flash & Math), e.g.
  • Intermediate Techniques - AS3
  • Mathlets for Students and Instructors

• Learning ActionScript 3.0. Companion web site for the same book, ISBN 059652787X (but also includes little tutorials and examples).

• Kirupa, e.g.
  • Using XML in Flash CS3/AS3

• Flepstudio has a series of tutorials.

• Flash-db.com has a series of tutorials.

Papervision Tutorials

See also Flash Papervision3D tutorial

• Papervision 3D Programing Tutorial - 3D Text
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Loading and Displaying a 3D Model
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Particle Systems with Flint
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Modify Textures At Runtime
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - WOW Physics
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Shading
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Effects
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Animated Textures
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - BitmapViewport
• Papervision 3D Programing Tutorial - Environment Mapping
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - SkyBox
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Animation
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Texture Smoothing
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Mouse Selection
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Enhanced Fog
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Terrain
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Simple LOD
• Papervision 3D Programming Tutorial - Mesh Splitting

Flex tutorials and examples

• The Joy of Flex, tips on Flex by David Coletta.

Game Programming

• Actionscript 3 (AS3) Game Primer @ 8bitrocket

Component programming

(to sort out)

• AS3 Mouse Events and Mouse Related User Actions by Drawk - Really useful.

• Quick Tips for Making ActionScript 3 Components by Ben Stucki.

• ActionScript 3.0 Forums at Kirupa.com. Also includes [ ActionScript 3 Tip of the Day]

• Animating Dynamic MovieClips in AS3 by Kirupa.

• Sending Variables to PHP from Flash And Back again! (AS2)

• Eric Cancil. A blog with AS3 code.

• $.console A console for debuggin, pops up over your application (looks good, not tested so far).

AS3 Books

• Moock, Colin, Essential Actionscript 3.0, O'Reilly. ISBN 0596526946. Read it (widged). This is a quite good book. It tries to do two things (1) provide a large overview of the ActionScript 3.0 language and (2) Provide a complex example of a quite complex program. The overview works well. I am not sure about the zoo example. It gives an idea of the way such a program gets written the OO way, but it's not clear that the book covers enough of the basics of OO programming to have you able to do more than copy, paste, and compile the code provided. The book works best for persons who start with actionscript and want to become acquainted with the different aspects of the language. One of the best books available. Keep in mind, however, that it has "essential" in the tiel. until a book "Actionscript 3.0, the definitive guide" becomes available. Something great about the book is that it is completely tool neutral. It is clearly explained how to run the code on either of Flash CS3, Flex Builder, Flex. Of Interest, codes and examples from the book are available on the author's website.

• ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook: Solutions for Flash Platform and Flex Application Developers by Joey Lott, Darron Schall, Keith Peters, O'Reilly. ISBN 0596526954. Didn't have a chance to read it. The idea of a cookbook is to present example code to solve different problems. It's a great way to boost your knowledge once you start to reach an "intermediate" level.

• ISBN 1590597915. Foundation Actionscript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move! by Keith Peters, Friends of ED. Bought it. Didn't have a chance to read it yet. Received rave reviews. Covers everything you need to know to realize complex animations, from trigonometry concepts to 3D animation.

• Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0, by Peter Elst, Sas Jacobs, Todd Yard. Friends of ED. ISBN 1590598458. I read a prior edition, on OO ActionScript not yet 3.0. An excellent book to learn the OO concepts behind AS3. The code mixes clear explanations and interesting enough examples (tweening animation, video medias, etc.). It also gives valuable tips on how to improve your coding practices by documenting your code and planning your design. Code examples can be downloaded from the FoED website.

• ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns: Object Oriented Programming Techniques, by William Sanders, Chandima Cumaranatunge, O'Reilly. ISBN 0596528469.

• Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns by Joey Lott and Danny Patterson, Adobe Press (1st Ed.) ISBN 0321426568. Had the merit to be out very early, right after Flex 2.0 got out. Didn't work for me. The O'Reilly book seems better.

• Head First Design Patterns, by Eric Freeman, Elisabeth Freeman, Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates. O'Reilly. ISBN 0596007124. Nothing to do with Flash or ActionScript 3 but a splendid book to familiarize yourself with a design pattern approach to programming. Particularly suit learners who suffer with traditional teaching formats and are open to the idea of having fun when learning. The tone is light and friendly, but the content is real smart. Each chapter is made about half of theory and half of practice. The exercises proposed are really clever and really get you understand the concepts in more depth than when reading a more theoretical book. Code snippets are in Java, so you need at least to have reached the intermediate level in AS3 to be able to transfer the examples and practice from Java to AS3. Because of that, perhaps not worth investing your money... but you can probably get it easily enough from a library or a friend.

Flex Books

• Programming Flex 2: The comprehensive guide to creating rich media applications with Adobe Flex, by Chafic Kazoun, Joey Lott. O'Reilly. ISBN 059652689X. Read it (widged). Very nice book. Ideal to get you started with Flex without any knowledge whatsoever of Actionscript or Flash (I had never programmed in Flash before reading that book). The first chapters are easy to follow, making sure that nobody will fall off the boat. The last chapters cover quite advanced concepts very efficiently.

• Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source, by Jeff Tapper, Matt Boles, James Talbot, Ben Elmore, Mike Labriola. Adobe Press. ISBN 032142316X. Had the merit to be one of the very first books on Flex 2. The title of the book reflects the fact that the approach taken here is to go through all that is required to create a complex enough on-line shop application. The application is being progressively written and you get precise information about why things get to be coded that way. It's a good book, especially if you are interested in the prospect of designing very modular applications. Its primary target is however freelance developers and really not students who want to learn how to write a mini-game.

AS 3 Example-based tutorials

• Flash Tutorial - Copy Motion as ActionScript 3.0
• Metah.ch has a series of tutorials with source code.

AS 3 Examples

• Flex Treemap Component
• Updated: List of Best Animation Packages for AS3
• On user-triggered and user-controlled interface animation

Sites with codes and Examples

• Kirupa.com
• bit-101

Code snippets and toolkits for Flash and AS3

Reusable Flash and AS code

It's hard to separate websites that rather provide code for Flash designers with little AS knowledge and more advanced AS programmers. Sorry, you will have to find out yourself ...

There are several kinds of components that Flash designers should know about:

• *.swf - Flash (embedd as movie)
• *.fla - Flash source code (i.e. a template with drawings and code)
• *.as - Action Script source code (watch out for the version !!)
• *.swc - Compiled components (like the ones in the built-in components library).

Code Repositories (mostly free)

• FlashTica Free Open Source Actionscript and Flash code files and resources directory. More specifically, this is a listing of websites that contain such resources.
• Flash Components at HotScripts.com
• Flash @ AdvanceScripts.com, the Script Hub. A lot of AS2-based stuff.
• Code Library @ actionscript.org. These are rather short code snippets that are useful for many programming problems.
• Adobe Exchange beta (various licences, also commercial).
• Flash-DB (older Flash, i.e. MX)
• Flashkit.com (Good large libary, but older Flash. Too many ads and difficult navigation and sorting.)
• ActionScript Library @ senocular.com
• Flash/Actionscript code repostory @ Kirupa.com
• Code Gallery @ onFlex.org. Specific to Flex and doesn't seem to be regularly updated anymore.

Where you can add and manage your own snippets

• Snipplr.com, this allows you to keep an album with your own code... and access the code contributed by others. Search for "Flash" or "AS3".
• DZone Snippets. Public source code repository. Easily build up your personal collection of code snippets, categorize them with tags / keywords, and share them with the world.

Search for ActionScript.

Commercial (I only want to have 5-6, the best at some point and not a long list ...)

• Oh my Flash
• OxylusFlash
• Stock Flash Community | flashgarden
• Flashcomponents (some free)
• Flash Valley (some free)
• Flashloaded

Reusable AS components and libraries

These are exclusively for ActionScript programmers. Should be updated- Daniel K. Schneider 17:01, 28 September 2008 (UTC).

Tweening libraries:

• Greensock Tweening Platform. A must-have library if you plan to create interactive Flash/AS programs. Can be used both within CS3/4/5 and pure ActionScript/Flex.
  • AS3 TweenLite tweening engine (in this wiki)

• Tweener Tweener (caurina.transitions.Tweener) is a Class used to create tweenings and other transitions via ActionScript code for projects built on the Flash platform.

• TweenFilterLite. TweenFilterLite extends the extremely lightweight (2k), powerful TweenLite "core" class, adding the ability to tween filters (like blurs, glows, drop shadows, bevels, etc.) as well as image effects like contrast, colorization, brightness, saturation, hue, and threshold (combined size: 5k).

PHP bridges

• WebORB for PHP Server-side technology enabling connectivity between Flex and Flash Remoting clients and PHP applications.

3D ActionScript toolkits

• See Flash 3D, an entry that should list most of the tools and available AS3 libraries.

Physics and particle engines

• APE (Actionscript Physics Engine). Free AS3 open source 2D physics engine for use in Flash and Flex, released under the MIT License
• FLiNT particle library
  • FliNT particle system (this wiki)

Visualization libraries

• Flare is an ActionScript library for creating visualizations that run in the Adobe Flash Player. From basic charts and graphs to complex interactive graphics, the toolkit supports data management, visual encoding, animation, and interaction techniques. It features a modular design that lets developers create customized visualization techniques. Note tested (but from the demoes you can see the great potential of this !)

Flash/AS3 and programming education

Using Flash and Actionscript to teach programming

• Stewart Crawford & Elizabeth Boese (2006), ActionScript: a gentle introduction to programming, Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, Volume 21 , Issue 3 (February 2006) Pages: 156 - 168. Also here and here (Actionscript 2.0, but some ideas are still good).

• Leutenegger, S. and Edgington, J. 2007. A games first approach to teaching introductory programming. SIGCSE Bull. 39, 1 (Mar. 2007), 115-118. DOI:http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1227504.1227352

• Stiller, E. 2009. Teaching programming using bricolage. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges 24, 6 (Jun. 2009), 35-42.

• Sands, M., Evans, J., and Blank, G. D. 2010. Widening the K-12 pipeline at a critical juncture with Flash™. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 25, 6 (Jun. 2010), 181-190. (ACM Abstract