How many people are using actionscript?

[korkus2000]

I have been amazed lately at the amount of people that just use Flash through the GUI without really using actionscript. Not that they don't know some actionscript, they just are use to using Flash the way they did back with version 3 and 4.

Actionscript is so powerful and can fix many of the problems with tween and motions. Not that you can't make awesome Flash projects without actionscript. I just thought most people using Flash were using actionscript since most Flash designers know JavaScript.

So anyone find themselves not using actionscript, or do you find you make movies with one frame with actionscript driving and drawing everything?

[jezra]

Interesting question. I've known that a lot of people use Flash but I never considered exactly how they use the software. With that in mind, I would like to propose a 3rd way to use flash: for the creation of bitmap graphics. Recently I made a diagram of an earthquake epicenter in Flash and exported the frame as a bitmap for use in a software project. I saved the source as a .fla so that other people at my work can edit the graphic as a vector object in the future. As a graphics creation tool Flash can be quite impressive. As far as your original question goes, I usually do a lot of both animation and scripting. I'll make a bunch of long animated swfs with very little actionscript and then I'll make a "front end" navigation that is almost all actionscript to load the animations when they are requested.

[benihana]

one frame with actionscript driving and drawing everything

this is my preffered method of working in Flash (unless its just a quick'n'dirty animation, in which case tweens etc are quicker)

I find AS offers more control and flexibility than GUI methods, and if I have to e.g. shape tween something, Ill do it in seperate MC to keep the main timeline as clutter free as possible.

Ben

[Harry]

As an animator, I say it depends. ActionScript is not the best way for everything. It depends on what is being animated and what feel you want to give the animation.

Also, before using one method, I always ask myself if which is faster - hence more productive. I have seen collegues script complex animations which they thought were cool - but wasted their time, were not optimized for quick edits or manipulation by other team members and did not improve the end result, or the size of the exported file.