Can somebody explain in a few sentences how these technologies relate: Flex, Flash, Air, ActionScrip

Posted by SimpaCar on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by SimpaCar
Published on 2010-05-07T01:16:10Z Indexed on 2010/05/07 1:28 UTC
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flash

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air

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actionscript

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flex

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swf

I've read about each of these but I still don't understand how they all inter-operate, which are competing technologies, or even really what each of them is distinctly.

Flash, Air, Flex... Are these all "containers"/JVM-like runtime environments, in which ActionScript code runs?

SWF,FLV,AIR... Are these competing file formats which a Flash, Air or Flex runtime environment executes?

ActionScript is a C-like language which compiles to SWF, FLV or AIR files?

Sorry, with all the marketing around these terms, some of which are used interchangeably, I am quite lost. Suppose I wanted to write an AIR application... what would that entail? Writing ActionScript, compiling it to a SWF, and then installing the AIR runtime to execute it? How's that different than Flash?

If I want to play AIR applications do I need a separate AIR runtime or does Flash execute AIR apps?

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