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A
Anonymous
January 20, 2009
Question

Any manual for AVM2?

  • January 20, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 887 views
Hi,

I am doing some research on Actionscript 3.0 and I would like to know more about AVM2.

I only found this on internet : http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles /avm2overview.pdf.
I am just wondering is there any other manual or material for AVM2 ?

Thank you very much.
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1 reply

N
Newsgroup_User
Inspiring
January 20, 2009
Ann1983,

> I am doing some research on Actionscript 3.0 and I would like
> to know more about AVM2.

AVM2 (ActionScript Virtual Machine 2) is the module inside Flash Player
9 and higher that executes ActionScript 3.0. I doesn't replace the previous
virtual machine (AVM1), but works alongside it to make Flash Player 9 and
higher capable of executing both legacy and current versions of
ActionScript.

> I only found this on internet
> http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/avm2overview.pdf.
> I am just wondering is there any other manual or material for AVM2?

The largest related body of work I can think of is the ActionScript 3.0
Language and Components Reference, available here:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AS3LCR/Flash_10.0/index.html

Of course, you may have already seen that, so if you're interested in
more -- or in other topics -- write back and I'll try to steer you in
another direction. What, specifically, are you looking for in regard to
AVM2?


David Stiller
Adobe Community Expert
Dev blog, http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."


N
Newsgroup_User
Inspiring
January 20, 2009
Ann1983,

> I am quite interested in the Actionscript performance
> improvement. such as integer is better than Number
> for iterations, type everything when you declare variables
> etc.

Gotcha. Some of what you mention (variable declaration, for example)
belongs to a general grouping of best practices that benefits all versions
of ActionScript. However, yes, AS3 brings a number of enhancements and a
significant performance boost when best practices are observed.

> So I hope to know more about the operation mechanism
> of AVM2 to explain.

I'm pretty knowledgeable about how to take advantage of the AS3
enhancements, but I'm afraid I can't explain *why* they work from an
under-the-hood perspective. The inner workings of Flash's virtual machines
themselves is beyond me. If that's what you're after, I'm guessing your
most useful answers will come from Adobe engineers -- though you might be
able to gather insights from Grant Skinner's blog, as well as the blogs of
other community leaders.

To get you started re: AVM2, at least tangentially, you might check out
Grant's article on AS3 garbage collection:

http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2006/06/as3_resource_ma.html

Tinic Uro, an Adobe engineer, often blogs about low-level Flash
Player/virtual machine specifics on this blog:

http://www.kaourantin.net/

For what it's worth, you can get a quick overview of AS3 benefits at
these two URLs:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/actionscript3_overview.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/actionscript_tips.html

... which don't go behind the scenes at all, but they at least give a
high-level summary of what to look for when researching other sites for the
lower-level stuff.


David Stiller
Adobe Community Expert
Dev blog, http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."


A
Anonymous
January 21, 2009

Thank you for your suggestion, that are quite useful.

:)
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