Stepping into the New Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Component Structure

Macromedia Flash MX 2004 introduces version 2 of the Macromedia Component Architecture, or "v2 components" for short. Naturally, this means you'll find new features, improved performance, and additional capabilities in this release. However, because of the changes to the underlining architecture, it also means you need to adopt new ways of scripting. Plus, updating your old applications that use v1 components raises a lot of questions. Will you be exporting to Flash Player 6 or 7? Will you be using ActionScript 1.0 or 2.0? Can you mix and match v1 and v2 components? There's no one answer and no one best practice because there are so many variables. In this article you learn the main differences between the old and new components. I also step you through your upgrade path options.