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L. McColl-Sylvester and F. Ponticelli

"Professional haXe and Neko"

The language used by Flash has
always been ActionScript (AS), a proprietary language very similar to the ECMAScript language. The
first real appearance of AS in Flash version 5 was improved in Flash 6 and it was complemented by AS2
in Flash 7. At the time it was possible to choose to compile for Flash 6 or 7. The next version introduced
new features mainly in a new class library that included the possibilities to upload files and manipulate
bitmap data. Version 9, the current version, has been a very long step forward; AS is now at its version 3
and the underlying Virtual Machine (VM) completely revamped under the name of ActionScript Virtual
Machine 2 (AVM 2). The old AVM 1 is still incorporated in the Flash Player to support legacy contents.
The new VM is a lot more optimized for performances and the API library has been completely
organized.
haXe provides a unique solution to target all the Flash versions still in use by now. With haXe you can
compile your movies for Flash 6 to 9 and you can also create common code that can be compiled at once
for more than one Flash version; when doing this you will find that there are consistent differences especially
between Flash 6 to 8 and Flash 9.


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