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ActionScript is a scripting language used in Adobe Flash. It is a variant of ECMAScript, which makes it easy to use for programmers experienced with other variants such as JavaScript. It is has been released under an open source License.
Versions[]
ActionScript 1.0[]
ActionScript 1.0 was officially introduced with Macromedia Flash 5. It was based on JavaScript. ActionScript 1.0 is a loosely-typed language. The language is primarily procedural, but new classes can be created using the prototype inheritance model. Due to the difficulty in OOP that AS1 presents and the availability of more advanced versions of ActionScript, ActionScript 1.0 is not very widely used any more.
ActionScript 2.0[]
Introduced in Macromedia Flash MX 2004, ActionScript 2.0 was Macromedia's first move towards bringing ActionScript closer to an Object-Orientated Langauge. It added several new OOP features. ActionScript 2.0 added several new core classes. With this version also came the ability to declare classes in external files and link them at compile time. Naturally, different types of classes were added: the intrinsic class and the dynamic class. AS2 added partial support for public and private methods and variables; unfortunately, members declared as private are not actually protected. Support for getter and setter methods was added.
ActionScript 2.0 added the option of having strongly-typed variables and functions. This was up to the developer; only the variables actually declared as such would behave as that type, and not every variable had to be typped. However, this was a major improvement over AS1, which featured no type-checking at all.
ActionScript 3.0[]
Introduced in Adobe Flash CS3 to give ActionScript the feel of an object oriented programming language.