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At Last, The Real Deal
Ever since Macromedia first tantalized us with Flash’s vastly improved script capabilities in version 4, we have been waiting for the first decent book that really taught us, meaning Flash-using designers, how to get a handle on this thing called programming.
Now, the very first book that does exactly that, and more, is here. True, there has already been two whole generations of books with recipes for scripting in Flash 4 and Flash 5, and others have showed us how to use the odd ActionScript in their project-based tutorials. But that approach leaves gaps, and fails to answer far too many questions. I constantly felt the need to understand programming from first principles, the same way I had learned art, and design, and writing, yet there were no authors who felt like tackling ActionScript in that manner.
Until Colin Moock. ActionScript: The Definitive Guide is the ActionScript reference book for beginning ActionScripters and seasoned programmers, and whatever your level of interest in Flash is the one book you should keep with you constantly. Mine has a permanent place in the backpack I carry every day. When I am reading other Flash books I have this one open beside it, so I can look up and understand the concepts other authors tend to assume you already know as well as they do.
And at long last I am beginning to get a proper understanding of what programming is all about, and how it really works. It is starting to lose its voodoo aspect, and that can only be a good thing. Flash ActionScripting promises so much, and yet it has been too bloody hard to learn for too long. All that has changed, with the publication of this book. ActionScript: The Definitive Guide—it is an essential.
The Book:
- Title: ActionScript: The Definitive Guide
- Author: Colin Moock
- Publisher: O’Reilly & Associates
- Published: 2001
- Pages: 696
- Illustrations: Monochrome
- ISBN: 1565928520
- Rating: 5
The Chapters:
- A Gentle Introduction for Non-Programmers
- Variables
- Data and Datatypes
- Primitive Datatypes
- Operators
- Statements
- Conditionals
- Loop Statements
- Functions
- Events and Event Handlers
- Arrays
- Objects and Classes
- Movie Clips
- Lexical Structure
- Advanced Topics
- ActionScript Authoring Environment
- Flash Forms
- On-Screen Text Fields
- Debugging
- Language Reference
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