Earlier versions of ActionScript offered the power and flexibility required for creating truly engaging online experiences. ActionScript 3.0 now further advances the language, providing superb performance and ease of development to facilitate highly complex applications, large datasets, and object-oriented, reusable code bases.

With ActionScript 3.0, developers can achieve excellent productivity and performance with content and applications that target Flash Player.

ActionScript 3.0 is based on ECMAScript, the international standardized programming language for scripting. ActionScript 3.0 is compliant with the ECMAScript Language Specification, Third Edition (ECMA-262). It also contains functionality based on ongoing work on ECMAScript Edition 4, occurring within the ECMA standards body.

ActionScript is executed by the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) built into the Flash Player. AVM1, the virtual machine used to execute legacy ActionScript code, powers Flash Player today and makes possible a wide range of interactive media and rich Internet applications.

However, developers have started to push AVM1 to its limits; their project requirements now demand a major breakthrough. ActionScript 3.0 introduces a new highly optimized ActionScript Virtual Machine, AVM2, which dramatically exceeds the performance possible with AVM1. As a result, ActionScript 3.0 code executes up to 10 times faster than legacy ActionScript code.

The new AVM2 virtual machine is available in Flash Player 9, and will be the primary virtual machine for ActionScript execution going forward. The older AVM1 will continue to be supported by Flash Player for backwards compatibility with existing and legacy content.

There are numerous products that generate content and applications targeted at the Flash Player runtime.

Often these products incorporate support for ActionScript to add interactivity and behavior to their output. In the Adobe product family, professional designers and developers might use ActionScript within several tools and servers—such as Flash, Flex, and Flash Media Server—to create content and applications for Flash Player.

The Flex product family, including the new Eclipse-based Flex Builder 2 IDE, will be the first product line to access the new capabilities of ActionScript 3.0.

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