Flash apps

Hey, I don't know much about flash other than it's used alot of make dynamic effects/games/controls on webpages. I thought I'd see if any one here has some experience with it.

I've read a few pages on flash, but they're all a bit foggy. Here's a couple questions:

-Is there any compilers/IDEs out there for free? Or is it proprietary like bmax?

-What is the production cycle of a flash app, that is, how does one make one?

Get it from Adobe, learn actionscript, and also the animation tools. As far as I know you create a file at the end not unlike an blitz exe but it's a flash file. You can still replace the icon etc.

Yes, there are free Flash IDEs (http://www.flashdevelop.org) and compilers (http://www.mtasc.org) available.

The Flex Builder SDK itself is also available for free from Adobe (http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/flexdownloads/index.html).

And yes, there are also proprietary Flash IDEs and Authoring tools on the market: Adobe Flash (Pro) and Adobe Flex Builder. Flash Pro aims more at designers while Flex Builder is based upon the Eclipse IDE and targets coders. They're both great tools.

Download a Flash (Pro) and/or Flex Builder trial from Adobe and play with it and study some tutorials (just google for "good flash tutorials" and see if you find one that you like).

When you're serious about learning ActionScript, buy the books by Colin Moock (http://www.moock.org) - they're the best.

ActionScript is an interpreted language, with similar technology as Java or Python. It uses a single-process/single-threaded development model.

The development cycle is similar to writing BlitzMax code: You design, code and then 'publish' one or more Flash files (which is what you could call an executable that can be run by the Flash player).

Flash uses the ShockWave File format (.swf) for deployment. Flash files are either embedded in an HTML page through some special tags -or- they can now be deployed as desktop apps via Adobe AIR (formerly code-named 'Apollo').

The most important parts to understand in Flash are the timeline and movie clip concepts, what the library is all about and that an entire movie clip can be a 'symbol' on just one frame of your timeline (you know, a movie within a movie, or like 'picture in picture' as TVs can do it).

Thanks winni, so just to confirm, I can develop full flash applications/dynamic effects for free?

another question:

This ActionScript, is it seperate from other flash tools ? like a seperate file? Or is it a library that is called within a flash file?

ActionScript is Flash's built-in object-oriented scripting language, it's part of the default package. Like JavaScript, it is based upon Ecmascript and has a component model and can be extended with external libraries and components. But there's a ton of stuff already built-in; especially Flex has almost everything that you need to build business applications.

I've never used the free development tools myself (Flash Pro and Flex Builder here), but Adobe have pretty much opened the entire platform and from what I've read, it should be possible to develop for the Flash platform exclusively with free tools. In any case, Adobe's Flex Builder SDK -does- have all the required tools except for an IDE. If you're more into coding than designing, then the SDK and your text editor of choice should do for you.

Action Script 3 is no longer interpreted. It is JIT compiled and it is tones faster.

cool, well i'm currently using notepad++ with it's built in actionscript/flash syntax lighting, and i'm using mtasc for the compliler... anyone here know some basic code for a "hello world" program? this one doesn't compile:

package {
  import flash.display.Sprite;
  import flash.text.TextField;

  public class HelloWorld extends Sprite {

    public function HelloWorld() {

      var textField:TextField = new TextField();
      textField.text = "Hello, world!";
      addChild(textField);

      trace("Hello, world!");
    }
  }
}

It's telling me phrase error on line one -- or unexpected package

i'm compiling it as a *.as file

thanks

hmm, interesting, from what I read, you use action script with a wierd xml type language for flash?

are flash and flex the same thing?

Also, I'm not keen on spending 600+ USD on a IDE unless I get really into flash, are there any free/cheaper visual flash IDEs out there? as it may take a while to learn the language itself... and a visual tool would certainly speed the process up.

currently I have the flex SDK installed, although still trying to figure out how to compile with it (for example what to call in DOS so I can make a batch file for it).

Thanks for all the help so far everyone!