“Devigner” fits really good, and Flash created us, there was nothing like that before… and way before there was any Flash AS,AS2,AS3 course available to learn fast and easy, you had to try things to see how all worked and then try some more, I know as I’ve been coding/designing in Flash since 1998…wow, that’s 10 years. I have trained a lot of designers into AS2 too, not an easy task but doable.
On the other hand AS3 is simply too complicated for a designer mind to understand.

As I pointed out on reflektions.com website, is it worth it for me to do the jump to AS3 when almost everything in my work field and with my deadlines is done on AS2 all over the world?
(advertising, and sometimes not even a week to develop/adapt/translate stuff)
And with big Portals starting to accept flash 8, AS2 for banners and stuff like that until now?
I just can’t see it happening any time soon.
Same as you, I want to learn AS3, but in my case not to do the regular job I’m paid to do now, AS3 is a great tool, but the wrong tool for my work at least for another year or so.

@John VH - You might be right about alot of it. Being so proficient in AS2 and then having to get worse to get better at AS3 is just a hard bridge to cross. But one I plan to do! We will see over the next few months!

http://theflashblog.com/?p=328#comment-233274

And I agree with a lot of what I have heard. Think about it…. the language is still optionally typed… the timeline is still there…. many of the core methods have not changed (like gotoAndPlay for example)…. your 3 basic symbol types are still there (movieclip, button, and graphic) and work just like they used too…. timeline animation works the same…..

Most of what changed can be transparent if you let it. To create a movieclip, just select something on stage, hit F8, and choose movieclip just like you used to. You don’t have to understand that MovieClip extends Sprite extends DisplayObjectContainer extends InteractiveObject (and so on and so on) to create simple animations and interactivity. You dont have to use the event name constants if you dont want to. You dont have to concern yourself with the differences between int and uint if you dont type your vars….. Heres an example:

stop();

var myVar = 10;

my_btn.addEventListener( “click”, onBtnRelease );

function onBtnRelease( event )
{
trace( myVar );
my_anim.gotoAndPlay( 2 );
}

That is perfectly valid AS3 on timeline. You can’t tell from that if I’m using AS3 or AS2 with an mx Button component. The following code works exactly the same:

import flash.events.MouseEvent;

stop();

var myVar:int = 10;

my_btn.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, onBtnRelease );

function onBtnRelease( event:MouseEvent )
{
my_anim.gotoAndPlay( 2 );
}

One BIG thing I think would be totally easier to learn/understand is the AS3 event framework…..there’s only 1. In AS2, just using the basic instrinsic mx classes that shipped with flash, you had 3: the function-property-pseudo-events (this.onEnterFrame = function()….), the addListener events ( myMovieLoader.addListener( this )…..), and then the EventDispatcher framework ( my_btn.addEventListener( “click”, onClick)…..). We wont even count AsBroadcaster….

I agree, a lot has changed, but a lot has also stayed the same. Sorry for the long ass comment….

Thought you might be interested in a little app, codenamed Bordeaux, that is still in development but targeted at graphic designers who want to develop projects with Flash interactivity but don’t want to learn ActionScript. Intriging.

http://www.beedigital.net/blog/?p=1703