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1: An Introduction to Flash, Flex, and AIR > ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0
ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0
AS3 is an object-oriented language for creating media content for playback in the Flash runtime clients’ Flash Player, Flash Lite, and Adobe AIR.
ECMAScript
The core of the AS3 language is based on the ECMAScript 4th Edition language specification, which you can view on the ECMA International website at www.ecmascript.org/. You can view the AS3 specification at http://livedocs.adobe.com/specs/actionscript/3.
AS3 has a syntax that is very similar to Java; it is also similar to the widely used JavaScript, the popular language used in web browsers. If you are from either of these programming disciplines, then AS3 will be very familiar.
ECMAScript 4 defines a number of rules for how code is written in AS3, including grammar and syntax. These dictate that code be written in a particular way, which should mean that code written by one developer will be recognizable to another.
