making the jump from AS2 to AS3

[phinnycupcakes]

Hi. well I got flash CS4 for christmas, and I have been using flash MX 2004 professional for about 4 years.

What should I look out for? is there a big change in the syntax?

Is it pretty much the exact same thing except with more predefined methods, and added parameters to existing methods?

[tBeck]

Flash MX 2004 introduced Actionscript 2.0 which was used up until 2 years ago when Actionscript 3.0 first came out with Adobe FlexBuilder 2.0 which used Flash Player 9, which is currently 10 now. Actionscript 3 is entirely different from Actionscript 2 and even uses a new Virtual Engine (AVM2). But because of this; ActionScript is faster than ever, but still is limited using full screen.

In ActionScript 3 you can directly access the flash runtime display list for complete control of what is being displayed at runtime.

So yes, there have been many changes since then-I would advise you to start with tutorials, books, whatever helps you learn the fastest. Adobe offers a great resource center for ActionScript 3 (not everything, but it's good).

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=Part6_ProgAS_1.html

[senocular]

Note that you can still use AS2 in CS4. AS3 will be a big leap forward, and though many things are similar or the same, a LOT has changed. As tBeck said, look for books and tutorials etc. I have a couple of things out there that can help:
http://senocular.com/flash/tutorials/as3withmxmlc/ (meant for people taking the free, Flex SDK approach to learning AS3; might not help you much)
http://senocular.com/flash/tutorials/as3withflashcs3/
http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=223798 (AS3 tip of the day)


And there are plenty of other resources out there. Flash Help is always a good place to start, and there are a number of links in the last one I posted above.