What is it?
HumboldtJS is a source-to-source compiler that transforms Actionscript - the language used in Flash - into Javascript.
Actionscript is a strongly typed OOP language and includes classical inheritance, interfaces, typed arrays and many more features which make it very suitable to build large scale web applications.
Added to that are bindings to regular HTML, which give you code- completion and type checking when manipulating the DOM.
And there are a bunch of libraries which provide anything from a display- model abstraction which makes it more like working with Flash, to things like PureMVC which help you setup huge applications.
How to use it?
To use HumboldtJS you need to have an IDE setup with the Adobe Flex SDK. This could be Flash Builder, IntelliJ, FDT or if you prefer even TextMate.
HumboldtJS piggybacks on the existing compiler, and lets it do the heaving lifting of compile-time checking.
The only thing you have to do extra to get JavaScript out of it is add an ANT build script which calls HumboldtJS. Check out the examples to see exactly how it works.
Open source
HumboldtJS will be completely open-source, but we’re still working out a few final glitches, so not everything is available as code just yet.
You can already start using everything though. Download the starter package from our GitHub.
What can it do?
Check out these samples (more to come soon):
