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THIS BOOK IS BY NO MEANS AN INTRODUCTION TO ACTIONSCRIPT 3. i would not recommend this book to anyone. I have actually used the book 1 or 2 times, but many of the exercises do not apply to the needs of an average web developer.
This book is a great companion for the avid Javascript programmer trying to get their feet wet in AS3. i had a friend of mine (a college physics major in calculus 2) look over these sections to try and make some sense out of them, and even he had a rather difficult time following the exercises. The book is also outdated, as it is referring to actionscript 3 for Adobe CS3 products.
The book talks about various topics regarding math based animation, but never actually goes in depth enough to be useful in this area. It is not, however, very accomodating to anyone else. The writing style of the book is very stiff and sterile, and seems to have been written by a computer.
Honestly, i hardly ever give poor reviews about products unless they REALLLLLY need them. I'm hoping someone will write an AS3 book that is useful one of these days.
I consider myself a designer and front end programmer, who wanted to get more into programming, with flash AS3 as the vehicle. Next step after this book is "Essential ActionScript 3.0" by Colin Moock, which is considered the prime reference manual for AS3. I have read through this book numerous times and a year later its all starting to click.
I would suggest this book for anyone who is finding it difficult to make the timeline work for more complex sites, and is interested in getting into code/xml driven sites.I work with a top notch Flash developer, and the best Flash advice I have recieved is to completely abandon the timeline, and my build my sites purely with AS3. **I highly recomend checking the companion site to the book, as there are several addition tutorials.For anyone who finds this book too challenging, I would say get "Learning Flash CS4 Professional" by Rich Shupe. This is the best resource I have found hands down for learning AS3.
The final xml driven, dropdown navigation system project in the end of the book really puts it all together and is invaluable. While very challenging in the beginning, doors will open with your site design. Not to mention that you will be 100% more marketable if you plan to do flash professionally.
Once you get a handle on timeline based design, you will find limitations, and understand the need to learn AS3. I thank the authors for their work.
If you need a quick reference guide, I'd suggest getting a book that is written as a reference guide (like The ActionScript 3.0 Quick Reference Guide: For Developers and Designers Using Flash CS4 Professional (Adobe Developer Library)).This is a difficult topic to write (and read) about. The book does pick up pace and gets easier to read after the first section.
When ActionScript 3.0 came along, I decided that I should understand it from the ground-up and build my future projects with it. I AM a beginner at ActionScript 3.0 and bought this book to help climb the steep "learning curve." Even with this book, however, the ActionScript 3.0 learning curve was still very steep.
I had done some basic ActionScript 2.0 code, but never really understood the language. The authors must teach classroom lectures on this subject, and the tangents of explanations and analogies in the book seem like they would work better in a classroom setting.
I think the book does a decent job explaining concepts when it introduces them.If you have never worked in ActionScript 2.0 before, or don't understand 2.0, the first three chapters will be the most agonizing part to read. The first section gives a background and abstract on ActionScript and 3.0 concepts and I suggest new readers go over and over the first section until they understand it before moving on.
The descriptions can become lengthy, so the book is a little clumsy to navigate as a reference book. I can't imagine a better way to thoroughly cover this difficult topic than the way this book does.
I'm about 1/4 through this book. It's my first exposure to ActionScript. The book seems well thought out and covers basics that I never knew.
I've done tons of AS2, but I've been struggling with AS3 for a long time. This book is great and is helping me finally figure out how AS3 works. Highly recommended.
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