What is new in Actionscript 3
General concept
Everything in AS3 is an object. Objects are defined by classes. If an instance for a new object, for example a textfield, is created the class has to be imported prior to that: import flash.display.TextField;. If you have been using Flash 8, then you are already familiar with that. Objects have either properties or have methods attached. Objects is what is making a class. They are also properties and methods. These objects define the classes prototype and traits. A prototype is inherited from a classes superclass. Former versions of actionscript used the prototype as identifier and searched along what is called a prototype chain or tree to detect inheritance. In AS3 the prototype is still used but as possible in earlier versions of actionscript cannot be modified. All inherited properties and methods of an instance are stored in the traits object, which results in increased performance of the Flash player.
New features
I could repeat here, what Adobe has already done much better, so I just refer to some links. New features and Learning Tips are best described at the Adobe site HERE. In the tutorial we will go into more details about some new features. Now let's start. The contents of the tutorial is on the left side together with useful links.