Learning ActionScript 3.0

Time: 9:00am - 4:00pm

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Flash And The City will have five workshops on Thursday, May 13 (the day before the conference officially kicks off). You’ll definitely want to come to Flash and the City a little early to be a part of the pre-conference tracks.

Learning ActionScript 3.0
Flash and the City Workshop by Rich Shupe

ActionScript 3.0 is fast and powerful enough to make things like moving thousands of sprites, creating sounds from pure code, and running real-time 3D engines like Papervision3D possible–all with better error reporting than any prior version of the language. With that power and performance, however, comes a steeper learning curve. This one-day workshop will help get you going with AS3 whether you have experience with AS1 or 2 or are just getting started.

The workshop will begin by bringing everyone to a comfortable level of familiarity with programming basics. It will then focus on the two most fundamental parts of AS3, the display list and event model–drawing vector assets with programming along the way so we can create artwork entirely with code.

After lunch, we’ll look at some basic motion and physics skills, and look at the differences between procedural and object-oriented programming. Then we’ll combine all that knowledge to build a simple particle system. Switching gears we’ll focus on loading and communicating with SWFs and culminate with an hour-long sound visualization project starting with a single timeline script and ending up with a multi-class OOP structure.

This combination of language fundamentals and task-based learning will have you understanding and writing your own AS3 code by day’s end. Source files for each major topic area will be provided.

Highlights include:

* An introduction to programming fundamentals including operators, loops, conditionals, and functions among other concepts

* How to declare variables with strong data typing for vastly improved error reporting

* Adding assets to the AS3 Display List for improved dynamic asset creation and depth management

* Using AS3’s event model for more consistent and more powerful event flow

* A brief introduction to object-oriented programming

* How to load external SWFs and communicate between loader and loadee

* How to visualize sound spectrum data in real time

* An overview of how to write classes, including examples of how to migrate existing timeline code to class structure

Schedule

9:00 pm            Intro

9:15 pm             Language Fundamentals

9:45 pm            Functions

10:15 pm            Display List

11:00 pm            Drawing with Code

11:15 pm            Event Listeners

12:00 pm            LUNCH

1:00 pm            Motion

1:30 pm            Procedural vs. OOP

2:00 pm            Particle System

2:30 pm            15 MINUTE BREAK

2:45 pm            Loading and Communicating with External Assets

3:15 pm            Sound Visualization: Procedural to OOP

4:00 pm            Wrap Up

Attendee Requirements

* A familiarity with Flash.

* BYOL (Bring your own Laptop)

* Copy of Flash or other ActionScript editing environment.

NOTE: While it may be possible to show some examples in Flex Builder, Flash Builder, or FDT, this is not guaranteed and we cannot spend class time supporting individual attendee setups. It will be assumed that you have a well-functioning AS3 compiling environment, and the bulk of the material will be shown in Flash to reach the widest audience.



A ticket for the workshop will gain you access to the following five workshops:

9:00am – 4:00pm

4:00pm – 5:00pm

  • FREE FDT Training – “Developing Flash and Flex Applications with FDT”

5:00pm – 10:00pm

We will be limiting the amount of tickets sold for the workshops to keep the workshops exclusive and allow each attendee to gain more knowledge. Secure your spot today.