ActionScript vs. Java vs. Less vs. ZenScript Comparison Chart

The ActionScript® scripting language lets you add complex interactivity, playback control, and data display to your application. You can add ActionScript in the authoring environment by using the Actions panel, Script window, or an external editor. ActionScript follows its own rules of syntax, and reserved keywords, and lets you use variables to store and retrieve information. ActionScript includes a large library of built‑in classes that let you create objects to perform many useful tasks. You do not have to understand every ActionScript element to begin scripting. If you have a clear goal, you can start building scripts with simple actions. ActionScript and JavaScript are both rooted in the ECMA-262 standard, the international standard for the ECMAScript scripting language. For this reason, developers who are familiar with JavaScript can find ActionScript immediately familiar. Animate includes more than one version of ActionScript to meet the needs of different kinds of developers.

Less (which stands for Leaner Style Sheets) is a backwards-compatible language extension for CSS. This is the official documentation for Less, the language and Less.js, the JavaScript tool that converts your Less styles to CSS styles. Because Less looks just like CSS, learning it is a breeze. Less only makes a few convenient additions to the CSS language, which is one of the reasons it can be learned so quickly. Mixins are a way of including ("mixing in") a bunch of properties from one rule-set into another rule-set. Less gives you the ability to use nesting instead of, or in combination with cascading.