
Action Script is an object oriented scripting language designed by Garry Grossman of Macromedia, used for developing and deploying websites and software is the Adobe Flash Player platform ie in the form of SWF files embedded in web pages ( RIA s- Rich Internet Applications) based on ECMAScript. Though owned by Macromedia it is now fully owned by Adobe after it took over Macromedia.
Though it first appeared as a very simple scripting language in 1998, it has now many features available which makes it a flexible programming language for web applications. The files coded i n Action Script have the extension '.as' .
Action Script combined with MXML makes GUI programming very easy. Flex uses Action Script and MXML to design RIA s. It is preferred above Java at client side programming while Java is used at the server side. Compared to java, Action scripts provides balance between static and dynamic languages by allowing you to program in both Java and JavaScript styles.
The latest version is Action Script 3.0 released in June 27, 2006. It runs on ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) in Flash Player 9 .