AS3 in Flash 8

[Ingenieurs]

Hello. I'm so fed up with CS3's bugs that I have spent the last week hunting the net for a solution. It seems many people are going back to Flash 8 until the bugs get fixed (hopefully along with the slow interface). The thing is, isn't Flash 8 incompatible with AS3? I read on a blog there was an update, or a patch, that allows you to code AS3 in 8, is this true?

Or am I going to have to move to Flex?

Maybe I should go live in a cave until CS4 comes out? ;)

Anyway, can I AS3 in 8?

A.

[iyeru42]

Well, you could do a google search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Actionscript+3+in+Flash+8&btnG=Google+Search) (this link here is a search I did, most of the results aren't what you want though.) Flash 8 by itself is VERY incompatible with AS3, without proper patching, etc.

I don't know why people moved to AS3 though, sounds like a real hassle using it (with no _root or that kind of stuff, Newgrounds Preloaders use AS2 as well.)

[Ingenieurs]

Like I say, I did Google for a while. Some people have patched it to work with AS3, others are using text edit etc or moving to Flex. I think I have decided to use Flex for the moment, Flash is becoming tiring to work with. :(

[axis]

Yeah, I'm struggling with the new CS3 interface. On slow pcs, it wipes out completely so that the layering screws up. For example, projector movies aren't placed on top of other windows - you have to hide the interface to see the movie and the output panel (which is also placed underneath other panels). Besides the fact that tracing essentially freezes the player due to the speed of running a trace I've been searching for a way of jumping back to flash 8, or at least replacing the interface in cs3.

You can run the preview AS3 version in Flash 8, but I'm not sure how close to final code the preview is. Of course, that preview has been subsequently removed from the adobe site, so we're forced to put up with lame cs3.

If you are willing to use as2 you should be fine, as AS3 is the only real update (photoshop and illustrator support are pretty useless due to the halfhearted integration attempt).

Otherwise, the best solution requires a big change in coding - use something like flashdevelop (http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/viewforum.php?f=11&sid=f0eccfc0f68e7f0fb90deb367ac6ba9e) and download the latest release. Now, don't use any timeline code - only code in flashdevelop. All your code should be in packages.

That's what I am doing at the moment, but it's still annoying having to run multiple apps just to get something basic running - and FD is still not perfect at picking up stuff from flash when you run it in flash ide mode.

[worthyashes]

I've been using Eclipse to develop my AS for years now using ASDT (Really cool AS2 plugin for Eclipse - chuck it in google and you'll find it easily) Rather than using MTASC for swf compilation I was using Eclipse to code the AS and then jumping back to Flash 8 to compile - yes I know 'king expensive compiler, but there you go.....

Noew I'm using the flex builder plug-in in exactly the same way. Code in Flex Builder, create the assets in flash and compile in flash. It seems to work for me. The only hiccup I've got is from time to time flex builder hangs when you save and re-build the code, which is seriously annoying (you can change the available memory apparantly, but I changed that and it didn't make much of a change). Mind you - it does give me a bit of time to write on the forums ;)