1.4. Summary

• AS3 is used to program interactive content for the Flash Platform.

• AS3 is object oriented and usually strongly typed, and it supports dynamic types.

• The Flash Platform encompasses languages, APIs, tools and IDEs, compilers, and the Flash Player and AIR runtimes.

• AS3 is the principal language used for Flash; MXML turns into AS3.

• Without the Flash Player API, you can't do much with AS3.

• The API is tightly tied to the runtime. This book is about ActionScript 3.0 and the Flash Player API.

• There are many tools for building Flash content. Most rely on the ActionScript compilers in the Flex SDK.

• You compile your ActionScript code to produce a SWF.

• SWFs are portable, compressed, and platform independent. They contain compiled code and other resources.

• SWFs are consumed by Flash Player.

• Flash Player comes on many platforms in many different flavors.

• All a user needs to run your Flash content is a compatible version of Flash Player.