I want to learn actionscript but I don't know wether to learn AS2 or AS3. Isn't AS3 an upgrade of AS2? I studied Lingo Scripts for Macromedia Director years back... 1998. (intermediate level) Are there any similarities with Action Script and Lingo scripts? Please advice.
Thank you. PpD
I would definitely go with AS3. AS2 and AS3 are very VERY similar, but there are some significant differences and AS3 has become the standard. If for some reason you need to do a project in AS2 after learning AS3, I don't think you'll have much of a problem.
Actionscript is pretty different from Lingo. I don't think there are many similarities beyond those that are similar among all scripting languages. That said, one of the programmers I work with came from a Lingo background and was able to pick up actionscript very quickly.
I would most definately learn AS3 as it is the latest version of actionscript which has some pretty nifty features.
Just to confuse you even more I'd also recommend you take a look at Flex. It is a new(ish) Adobe technology. Think of it as a more expressive way of writing user-interfaces in actionscript.
AS3 is a fully object oriented strictly type language much like java, but is based on ECMAScript similar to javascript.
So syntactically it will look similar to other "scripting" and it can access the same flash player classes that previous versions of Actionscript used, however I would say they are NOT the same. The very fundamentals of the language have changed so much that current versions of the flash player have two engines one for AS3 and one for legacy versions.
That said you can learn whatever you like and both versions will fun in the flash player, but I would go with AS3 as that is a full robust language and is the future of the flash development platform.
These articles are dated but they give a solid look at the syntactic differences in the languages as of AS2
If you want to learn something that is rapidly approaching obsolescence, AS2 is what you are looking for. If you want to learn a powerful language with a future and many career opportunities, then AS3 is the way to go.
I highly recommend Colin Moock's Essential Actionscript books for either version.