What are Adobe Flex, Flash, ActionScript and their relationship to each other, if any?

This is obviously a rookie question about Adobe technologies, but I am seek开发者_如何学Going a canonical answer to help me understand the adobe development stack.

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Flash was the original platform, but also refers to the development tool for building timeline-based animations. This program was geared initially towards animators and artists more than programmers. Actionscript is Flash's programming language. There are 3 versions - Actionscript 1 was rudimentary and is fairly obsolete. Actionscript 2 was built on AS1 and was used commonly. Actionscript 3 was a complete overhaul of the language to make it ECMAscript compatible. AS1/2 and AS3 are not compatible at all - the Flash Player Plugin that browsers use to display flash either use the AS1/2 virtual machine or the new AS3 virtual machine. The rewrite of AS3 along with the new VM was meant to increase performance and create a more substantial programming language.

Flash's main format that is exported for display onto the web is the .SWF file (usually along with HTML as well).

Flex Builder is another way to author, and is geared completely towards developer. Rather than having drawing tools and a timeline to control animation, Flex Builder is more of an IDE for building Flash-based applications. Flex Builder includes pre-built UI and data features that are not available in the Flash authoring program. However, the end product of Flex Builder is ultimately .SWF files (along with relevant HTML).

I believe the confusion that the two different names (Flex and Flash) have created has guided Adobe in renaming Flex Builder to Flash Builder in the present version. Just two ways to create the same types of files - either more on the visual/animation/artistic side or on the programming/application side.

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Adobe Flash is the runtime that Flash application run in.

Adobe Flex is a framework to make Flash application development easier for developers (rather than traditional Flash applications/animations/movies that are produced by graphic design/animation folks).

ActionScript is the scripting language for Flash. You can use it with both Flash and Flex.