ActionScript was originally developed for interactivity in Macromedia Flash. Its current implementation is compliant with ECMAScript, a superset of JavaScript that is similar to ExtendScript.
Macromedia Flash Player 2: The first version with scripting support. Actions included gotoAndPlay, gotoAndStop, nextFrame and nextScene for timeline control.
Macromedia Flash Player 4: First player with a full scripting implementation (called Actions). The scripting was a flash based syntax and contained support for loops, conditionals, variables and other basic language constructs.
Macromedia Flash Player 6: Added an event handling model, accessibility controls and support for switch. The first version with support for the AMF and RTMP protocols which allowed for on demand audio/video streaming.
Macromedia Flash Player 8: Further extended ActionScript 1 and 2 by adding new class libraries with APIs for controlling bitmap data at run-time, file uploads and live filters for blur and dropshadow.
ActionScript 3[]
Main article: ActionScript 3
Adobe Flash Player 9 (initially called 8.5): Added ActionScript 3.0 with the advent of a new virtual machine, called ActionScript Virtual Machine 2 (AVM2), which coexists with the previous AVM1 needed to support legacy content. Performance increases were a major objective for this release of the player including a new JIT compiler. Support for binary sockets, E4X XML parsing, full-screen mode and Regular Expressions were added. This is the first release of the player to be titled Adobe Flash Player.[4]
Adobe Flash Player 10 (code named "Astro"): Added basic 3D manipulation, such as rotating on the X, Y, and Z axis, a 3D drawing API, and texture mapping. Ability to create custom filters using Adobe Pixel Bender. Several visual processing tasks are now offloaded to the GPU which gives a noticeable decrease to rendering time for each frame, resulting in higher frame rates, especially with H.264 video. There is a new sound API which allows for custom creation of audio in flash, something that has never been possible before.[5] Furthermore, Flash Player 10 supports Peer to Peer (P2P) communication with Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP).
