A. V. Yeganov said
If you already know AS3 and know how to combine it with Flex and are looking for more advanced examples then do not get this book - get ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook. This book only shows you the basic things and the starting point of most of the examples in the book is either CS3 and Flex - AS3 is used like a helper method.
James Kumorek said
I've found this to be an excellent overview for programming in ActionScript - it's been a great help.
James W. Truncali said
This is my first introduction to programing. The first few chapters of this book were brain busters. Chapter 4 gets a little nicer. The authors rhythm and sense of humor make it a little easier to get through the tedium of information.
Bao Quoc Truong said
The key strength of this book is the breath of coverage that it provides the reader. The topics covered with definitely peak the interests of a developers who range from beginner Flashers to long-time professional Flex ninjas. Topics such as basic programing principals serves as the perfect foundation to steer new flash developers in the right direction. But it is the examples and real world applications (image loaders, mp3 players and rss xml integrations) that will continue to ignite the interests of developers and all levels and skills.
S. Brown said
I find that one of the hardest things about picking up a tech book is determining the book's target audience, i.e. what do the authors assume you already know? Personally, I've been a programmer for the last 10 years and have been tasked with learning ActionScript as part of a new project. When I started looking at books on the subject, I couldn't find very many AS books that were aimed at developers only without going to a reference manual. I suppose this is a function of AS being intimately related to Flash, but that's just where I was coming from. In the end, I picked up this book because it covered AS and Flex, which I am also picking up.
Before I say anything else, its important to realize that ActionScript 3.0 has a massive API, so it will be almost impossible to do lots of work with it without using a language reference. Anyone learning AS should be prepared for this.
Overall the book is a good one. It does a very solid introduction of the language, including a good overview of object-oriented programming. Maybe it was because I already understood 90% of the concepts, but I found most of AS pretty easy to pickup. Most of the examples are from Flash, which makes it a tad confusing at times if you don't already know Flash. Most of them are not that difficult, so its not insurmountable, however. I had to ask a few questions of some friends who are flash guys to make a few things make sense, but thats not the end of the world. Flex is really only touched on at the end of the book, and its Flex 2 at that.
So, here's my .02 on the target audience issue I mentioned. I would recommend this book to any Flash developer looking to learn ActionScript, or to a programmer from some other OO language (like Java) that knows some Flash and wants to learn AS. It will definitely get you going in the right direction, and when combined with the reference I mentioned will give you a solid foundation. If you are a developer looking to learn AS and/or Flex, I wouldn't recommend this book. There are better books out there that don't require as much Flash knowledge. Its a good book, just not the right one for me.
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