Question for the Actionscripters...

[Theiggsta]

Hi there,

I was just curious as to how powerful Actionscript in FlashMX really is and what it is capable of doing. Can someone explain what the capabilities of Actionscript are and any limitations it might have? I am looking to possibly use it in an upcoming project, Flash remoting and Java seem to be a winning combination.

The impression I am getting is that Macromedia has accepted Java for the serverside technology because its proven, however for the clientside it seems Java's new UI replacement is Flash due to the advent of remoting and actionscript.

I would be greatly appreciative of an explination and any information, thank you in advance to whoever responds.

[freddydoesphp]

Well I mean what kind of answer are you looking for? Are you looking to find out if its better than Flash 5 actionscript was? The answer is yes, to that question. Flash MX actionscript AFAIK is based on ECMA(some number) script (kinda like what javascript) is based on.

Flash MX is very well suited to be a presentation layer for whatever business layer is being implemented, there are now remoting tools, for all the major web languages, including Java, .NET, ColdFusion (which all cost an arm and a leg), there is even a free implementation of remoting for PHP, http://amfphp.sourceforge.net

However the Flash UI components are a bit bloated at the moment and will hopefully be slimmed down in the next version. I do believe that is due to the fact that flash is again client-side script for the most part, so like other client-side technologies its dependent on the viewer's system capabilities to perform at the level you want. Meaning if you have 18 dropdown lists in one frame of a movie, your users on pIII 500 MhZ machines might see some slowing.

[Theiggsta]

Basically I want to replace AWT/Swing which is such a nasty memory hog. I want to write an application which will interface with my website that has a library of files. The client should be able to grab the content off the server and read into the deployment files. Its basically a pseudo package manager with XML deployment files.

I dont know if Actionscript has come this far, if it has then I guess I have found my setup!