SCRIPTING

In its infancy, Flash gave us little in the way of interaction. It was generally just used as a way to deliver basic animation, video and music. Scripting was supported but it was a very simple implementation.

During its development the scripting capabilities of Flash have improved tremendously. Flash now offers ActionScript and Javascript like support. The type of Javascript used within the Flash programming environment, is not Javascript per se, it is a scripting language variant that is close in syntax to Javascript but it has a completely different application framework, with totally different libraries. ActionScript is the main scripting language within Flash and is used to add dynamic effects and interactivity to Flash applications.

Scripting support has become increasingly advanced in the more recent versions of the Flash player and development tool. Flash MX 2004 saw the birth of ActionScript 2.0, which made it far easier to develop Flash applications. These developments in scripting support and ActionScript enabled Flash authors to animate objects with greater ease than they could before using traditional Flash animation techniques.

Recent versions of Flash, work in conjunction with the web browser, to deliver rich media content utilizing the web browser’s enhanced XML support. Why do these work well together? Well, the browser offers superior XML support but Flash offers better support for vector based graphics and comes complete with ActionScript support that enables the swift generation of interactive animation. The combination of XML browser and Flash technologies is referred to as AFLAX.

AFLAX technology is utilised by media companies, such as YouTube, to protect the underlying content (music and video) called within the Flash files that they serve on their site. It enables media content to be almost invisibly streamed through a Flash file. This makes it extremely difficult for hackers to get to the media source, although there are some applications that are able to trace the XML.