Jangaroo is a set of tools to run ActionScript 3 code in JavaScript 1.x environments, especially in current web browsers.

The 'J' hints at JavaScript whereas the 'oo' stands for object-orientation. The allusion to 'kangaroo' is not conincidential, either: you should be able to make much bigger jumps with Jangaroo than with JavaScript 1.x alone.

Jangaroo is provided under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

First, you should download the full distribution and extract it from its archive. Afterwards follow the steps described in the Jangaroo tutorial. The resulting example application is a good starting point to experiment with Jangaroo's language features.

Another approach especially for larger projects is to use the Jangaroo Maven plugin.

Jangaroo works in all popular browsers. Known to work are:

• Internet Explorer version 6, 7 and 8,
• Firefox version 2 and up,
• Safari 3.0 and up,
• Mobile Safari (iPhone),
• Google Chrome 1 and 2,
• Opera 9.25 and up,
• Rhino (Java-based JavaScript engine) 1.5, 1.6R6 needed for getter/setter support.

Konqueror version 3.4 is known to have problems which will be fixed in an upcoming release.

Getters and setters are not supported in Internet Explorer (see limitations).

Please report any problems to the Jangaroo team.

At the moment, there is no dedicated bug tracker for Jangaroo, but you can report any problems by contacting the Jangaroo team.

If you are interested in contributing to Jangaroo, of course you should start with downloading the source code zip, and try to figure out where to add the feature you have in mind. Feel free to get in touch with the Jangaroo team for help at any time. When sending in patches, make sure that you are allowed to publish the patches under the Apache License, version 2.0. We hope to soon provide a source repository where you can access the source code of the current development version.

Yes, it is, but with a different focus. While Mascara shows ambitions to provide a feature complete transformation of of ECMAScript 4 to JavaScript 1.x, Jangaroo does the same thing for ActionScript 3. We think that field-proven AS3 much better supports software development in the large by providing packages, while some of ECMAScript 4's new language constructs are rather academic and it lags behind in tool support.

Jangaroo is designed to keep source code and output code as similar as possible, not only by keeping line numbers, but even by parsing some of the AS3 syntax on the client. Thus, we simplify source-level debugging. In order to be able to generate efficient code at the same time, Jangaroo supports different code output modes. If optimized for deployment, the generated JavaScript code becomes quite concise.

Jangaroo requires a separate runtime library to be deployed, but by this means gains the ability of controlled initialization and easy up to automatic loading of classes from multiple sources.

While the Mascara compiler is written in Python, the Jangaroo compiler is implemented in Java. Both Python and Java are well suited for Web applications (e.g. to implement on-the-fly compilation) and need a runtime. Your choice depends rather on your personal preferences and project environment.

That said, two competing offerings for an ECMAScript-based language being transformed to JavaScript 1.x will provide reassurance to users of both Mascara and Jangaroo that this is indeed a future proof approach.