Switching to classes

I am getting ready to start a huge project in Actionscript 3.0 and it's very risky. Up until now I have been adding all of my Actionscript 3.0 code exclusively in the Actions panel, and now I am going to switch to using external class files for all of my coding. The reason for this change is that using external class files will keep my code a lot better organized, and it will allow me to take advantage of the constants and the protected and private variables, which are forbidden in the Actions panel. I think that I will start with the Jump program and move forward. For right now, I will simply create the class files.