Essential ActionScript 3.0 (Essential) | 
 enlarge | Author: Colin Moock
Publisher: Adobe Dev Library
Category: Book
List Price: $54.99
Buy New: $26.93
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New (47) Used (16) from $22.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  59 reviews
Sales Rank: 6972
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 946
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7 x 1.7
ISBN: 0596526946
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.696
EAN: 9780596526948
ASIN: 0596526946
Publication Date: June 22, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: All orders ship same business day via standard shipping (USPS Media Mail) if received by 1 PM CST.
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Product Description
ActionScript 3.0 is a huge upgrade to Flash's programming language. The enhancements to ActionScript's performance, feature set, ease of use, cleanliness, and sophistication are considerable. Essential ActionScript 3.0 focuses on the core language and object-oriented programming, along with the Flash Player API. Essential ActionScript has become the #1 resource for the Flash and ActionScript development community, and the reason is the author, Colin Moock. Many people even refer to it simply as "The Colin Moock book." And for good reason: No one is better at turning ActionScript inside out, learning its nuances and capabilities, and then explaining everything in such an accessible way. Colin Moock is not just a talented programmer and technologist; he's also a gifted teacher. Essential ActionScript 3.0 is a radically overhauled update to Essential ActionScript 2.0. True to its roots, the book once again focuses on the core language and object-oriented programming, but also adds a deep look at the centerpiece of Flash Player's new API: display programming. Enjoy hundreds of brand new pages covering exciting new language features, such as the DOM-based event architecture, E4X, and namespaces--all brimming with real-world sample code. The ActionScript 3.0 revolution is here, and Essential ActionScript 3.0's steady hand is waiting to guide you through it.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 54 more reviews...
 Flash Developers: You Will Be Ready to Start Using AS3 After Reading This. January 7, 2009
I remember reading the documentation for Flash MX back around 2003-2004. It had this big section about object-oriented programming and why it's so great. The idea of reusing snippets of code by arranging them as modular classes was easy to understand and get on board with, but it never stuck with me when it came time to build an app. That was partly because I had just barely gotten into scripting at that point, but it was also because you can't truly explain the practical benefits of of OOP in just a few pages.
This book makes OOP tangible. It is a long book, and it goes into exhaustive detail. When you finish reading the first half of it, you will have seen numerous examples of OOP in action, and you will have practical knowledge of when OOP can work for you and how to go about implementing it in basic ways. When I started reading the book, I had never bothered arranging my code into classes. After I read it, I couldn't wait to jump onto my computer and start building a few classes for future use. Each chapter started off kind of scary as I delved into new, unfamiliar subject matter, but by the end of each chapter I felt like a bulb had lit up inside my head and I was beginning to realize I had powers as a programmer that I never knew I possessed. It also shed a lot of light on terminology that I had heard thrown around before but that I never understood the significance of. I'll admit -- reading a couple hundred pages about programming can be a chore. I took lots of naps along the way. But when I started this book I was just a guy who could write scripts, and when I finished I was on my way to learning some serious programming.
You might wonder why the book is called "Essential Actionscript 3.0" if it is all about OOP. Well, in many ways the two topics are one and the same. I believe most potential readers are like myself. We have a background in Flash and maybe even Actionscript, but we are not full-time programmers by trade. In order to make the transition from Actionscript 2 to Actionscript 3, the main thing we have to learn is Object Oriented Programming. AS3 embraces OOP concepts much more closely than AS2, and if you start to understand OOP, you start to understand why AS changed the way it did in moving from version 2 to version 3. Even those who think that AS3 code looks unnecessarily cumbersome at first glance might come around and realize that its long-term benefits outweigh the cost of the learning curve once you start building truly object-oriented apps that run super fast.
People with a background in computer science might get a little less out of the book, as you should already be familiar with OOP. You could still learn a lot about what AS3 supports in comparison to other OOP languages, but the majority of that can be gleaned from any documentation of ECMA guidelines, as Adobe is adhering as closely as they can to those guidelines. There is a lot of documentation out there about AS3's built-in classes, and Adobe maintains a pretty excellent language resource on its website.
But again, for people who are Flash developers first, and programmers second, this book is an excellent way to go from AS2 to AS3. And if you find yourself drawn to AS3 programming and want to learn even more, check out "ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns" by the same publisher. That book will take you from knowing how to build OOP apps in AS3 to structuring your applications in ways that professional programmers have considered standard for several decades.
For a beginner as for an AS2 jumper October 16, 2008
I really liked Mr.Moock's book, as it goes from the fundamentals to crystal clear object oriented programming. As an AS2 programmer I filled gaps to make a succesfull switch to ActionScript3.0, and got a good grip in Flex also. Recommended!
 Too descriptive, -makes the simple seem complex October 16, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I don't really like this book. Its way too descriptive and the result is that the subject matter is made to seem over-complicated. If you have some familiarity with OOP programming, you'll have to sort through lots of reading to get a few needed bits of information. If you're new to programming, the first 137 pages have no working code and so you'll have to understand deep and detailed programming basics without putting any theory into practice or having any working experience with the content. 'Not what I would want if I were a beginner.
I'm a huge fan of O'Reilly books, but this book should be avoided.
Essential ActionScript 3.0 October 13, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Good book as a code reference but in my opinion we need more real exercises for a better understand.
Essential ActionScript 3.0 - Colin Moock August 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is brilliant. It's encyclopedic. It is a must-have to better understand AS 3 and to hopefully lower your frustration when coding. I am a designer fairly new to AS 3 and found this book gave clear, detailed explanations on every aspect of AS 3. Like an encyclopedia, each chapter breaks down specific core concepts, from Arrays and XML, into their basics. Information is laid out well and can be found quickly simply by looking at the book's table of contents. As a reference book, it fills in the "why" that other books on Flash or on-line tutorials don't have time or space to cover in easy to understand detail. Colin Moock avoids confusing jargon and de-mystifies ActionScipt.
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