Comments on: Anyone using ActionScript 2 to build AIR applications?

By: Lubomir Ivanov

Lubomir Ivanov — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:01:47 +0000

——
AIR apis are not exposed to AS2, but, you can run AS2 content by specifying the SWF in the application descriptor file and creating the AIR file with ADT (in the AIR SDK).

I suspect that not many if anyone is doing this, but that is what this post aims to discover.

mike chambers
———

I gave this method a go and it worked like a charm with a simple AS2 clock application.
I’ve published the AIR project from Flash CS3 and then simply replaced the AS3 published swift with the AS2 clock. ADT made the AIR package and the AS2 app is now working.

So why disabling the AIR/ActionScript 2.0 Publish option in the Flash API?

Lubo

By: Warern

Warern — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:04:03 +0000

Hi Mike,
I can get AS2 SWF in the browser to communicate with an AIR app via LocalConnection, but I cannot get comms back from the AIR app to the AS2 SWF in the browser.

Any suggestions please. (I am going mad here…)

By: Sakana

Sakana — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:40:54 +0000

We use the possibility to load AS2 SWF in an AS3 root for a project of games.
We needed to reuse old flash game, on a new site in as3.

By: edzis

edzis — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:45:49 +0000

I pushed a ready made AS2 product customization web app into AIR when clients wanted a locally running version and not compromising the possibility to send e-mail messages (communicating to server).

http://www.heckyes.homewebsite.info/Rawlings/baseball_air/

By: mikechambers

mikechambers — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:06:30 +0000

@Alex

–
Can you recommend a good place to find any sort of “this is how AS2 did it, and this is how AS3 can do it” comparison?
–

There is a good article to get started on here:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/actionscript_tips.html

and also here:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/six_reasons_as3.html

and

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/2/langref/migration.html

and

http://actionscriptcheatsheet.com/blog/2007/03/01/actionscript-20-to-30-migration-cheatsheets-new-free-download/

mike chambers

mesh@adobe.com

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:56:55 +0000

Thanks for the options for using AS2, but since I’m starting from scratch I guess it’s going to be better to familiarize myself with AS3 and get it done using that.

After I posted I started reading up on AIR (haven’t looked at it since May of last year when I determined it wasn’t ready to build a production app) and it seems like there are a ton of features (like clipboard support) that I can make use of now.

Can you recommend a good place to find any sort of “this is how AS2 did it, and this is how AS3 can do it” comparison? I know some components just aren’t there for Flash CS3, but I didn’t know if anyone has recreated them yet or created a walkthrough of how to do it yourself.

Thanks!

By: mikechambers

mikechambers — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:05:51 +0000

@Are there any good reasons not to use AS2 for an AIR app?

Yes. The AIR APIs are only exposed to ActionScript 3 content. If you do need to use existing AS2 content in an AIR application, then you should do one of the following:

1. Create an AS3 based shell that loads the AS2 content. AS2 to AS3 communication needs to be done via localconnection.

2. Create an AS3 based shell that loads an included HTML template that then loads AS2 content. Communication is AS2 — (External Interface) — JavaScript — (Direct communication) — AS3 / AIR Apis.

In general though, an AIR application built entirely in AS3 is going to be easier to develop and maintain over the long term.

Hope that helps…

mike chambers

mesh@adobe.com

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:08:35 +0000

I am about to embark on a new project where the platform is going to be AIR consuming .NET webservices. After a project I did last year with Flash CS3 and AS3 almost made me pull all my hair out and curse everyone in sight for the functionality that was removed from Flash (specifically webservice connectors) I was considering going back to AS2 for this AIR app. Are there any good reasons not to use AS2 for an AIR app?

By: Dru Kepple

Dru Kepple — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:03:37 +0000

@Jonathan: When I worked with Zinc, it was painful at best. AIR has been an absolute dream in comparison. Zinc might be safer, but I’m not so sure about easier. Of course, porting a “fairly large system” to AS3 is nothing to sneeze at. But Zinc is expensive, and doubly-so if you want to support both Mac and PC. Not to mention that getting a Mac+PC app created in Zinc requires tons of conditionals based on OS…it’s not nearly as cross-platform as they would like you to think. And the Zinc application itself (the software you use to create the executable) is absolutely horrendous. Not nice to use at all.

If it were up to me, I’d look forward to porting thing to AS3 (a chance to refactor!) and using AIR. You’ll learn lots and not invest money in something that you won’t need for very long. Just my two cents.

By: Lawrence

Lawrence — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:37:22 +0000

We’ve built a web-based eLearning platform with AS2, and we have thousands of Flash 8 SWF assets used in the various courses. There is also a runtime debugging application in AS2 that connects via LocalConnection.

1) We’ve had requests to make the courses portable (i.e. no network), and AIR provides a clean way to package and distribute them, since there are hundreds of files in each lesson. Also, without a standalone Flash Player installed, the course viewer and debugger currently run with distracting browser chrome and possibly in separate browser tabs. For our developers, at least, we created a minimal .NET app that hosts the Flash Player.

2) For a long time we’ve talked about expanding the functionality of the debugging application to include lesson authoring capabilities, thus requiring file system access to work with our XML docs. Before AIR, we had our eyes on tools like SWF Studio. With AIR, we can achieve this by migrating the debugger/authoring tool to AS3, while leaving the course delivery platform on AS2 (since LocalConnection bridges the two) until we get around to migrating the entire portfolio, if ever. If we use AIR for the debugger/authoring tool, we might as well run the AS2 course viewer as an AIR app also, leading to an AS2 in AIR situation.

This is future work for us, but maybe still worth mentioning.

-Lawrence