How AS3 Helps You Program with Purpose ![[Registration never required for free content]](/images/free.gif)
By: David Stiller on Wednesday, September 3, 2008
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ActionScript has historically been a very forgiving language. In some ways, you can draw a comparison between older versions of ActionScript and older versions of HTML. In the early days of web development, HTML was deceptively unfussy. Styling was handled with straightforward <font> tags, which all too often became a redundant jumble. Closing </p> tags were optional, nested tags could be closed out of sequence from how they were opened, and dozens of other lenient practices led — or had the tendency to lead — to overtime headaches.
Popular websites like The Web Standards Project and CSS Zen Garden have since sparked a surge of interest in a practice called semantic markup, in which great care is taken to cleanly separate styling and formatting from content. This separation usually relies on XHTML specifications, which are considerably stricter than HTML, and coupled with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Ironic as it may seem, adherence to a stricter standard has gradually made things easier for Web developers. It's a bit like the idea that picking up after yourself throughout the day saves you from facing an overwhelming mess at the end of the week. ActionScript 3.0 is more disciplined than its predecessors in a similarly helpful way.
This article, adapted from an excerpt of The ActionScript 3.0 Quick Reference Guide (ISBN: 0596517351), discusses how the complexities of ActionScript 3.0 can actually be a good thing, because they encourage developers to think about code organzation as they program. This quick answer guide is slated for October, 2008, published by O'Reilly, and is written by Community MX partner David Stiller, as well as Rich Shupe, Jen deHaan, and Darren Richardson.
