less than the previous one, but stunning anyhow
|
Colin is a great writer and he is an actionScript guru. Don' t forget that.
Years ago I studied his well known "definitive guide to actionscript" and we can assume is the fundamental bible for anyone who wants get involved in developing flash applications.
If you are new to flash, I suggest you to buy the AS 1 book of colin also used(and cheap) because in this last book you will find a lot of OO code but nothing about how the old OO was with AS1 and nothing about how to code in "core" actionscript, like managing arrays for instance or layers.
If you want to became a master in actionscript, I suggest you to start from the As 1 book and go on with this one.
In this book is very interesting the design pattern chapter where he discussed the Observer and Delegation patterns among the others. I think this 2 patterns are very very important in flash development. And is not always easy to understand them because for the pattern you have to pass different
Another point of interest is the moviclip nesting and creation inside the As2 classes and the described duality of a movieclip.
He will teach you how to manage with composition or inheritance depending on the purpose of your project.
Great book,
suggested.
|
|
My God man, will you get to the point!
|
I feel very strongly about this book, and just had to write a review.
I'm a very experienced AS1 programmer, and have been so busy with working that I wanted a solid, expert jump start to AS2. I saw the word "Essential", read the reviews of the book and thought - great! However, I can honestly say that this book could have been written in a quarter of the pages. So much of it feels padded out with overly wordy paragraphs and conceptual rather than practical examples, and I feel quite angry about that.
Mr Moock's style seems to be the following:
1 - do some theory
2 - get lost in tidbits of information about said theory, and potentially, some history
3 - explain said theory using an abstract and fairly conceptual argument
4 - explain the first half of the correct way to do it in mind-numbing detail
5 - explain a wrong way to do it, also in mind-numbing detail
6 - explain yet another wrong way of doing something related ... in yes, you've guessed it, mind numbing detail
7 - finally get round to explaining the last half of the STILL conceptual idea, whilst reminding you of several things that you probably leant on day 1 of learning AS1.
You can read 10 pages and you feel like banging your head against a brick wall as he takes a paragraph to explain that class names are case sensitive:
"If you name your class ImageViewer (with an uppercase "V") but mistakenly named your .as file Imageviwer.as (with a lowercase "v"), Flash won't be able to find the ImageViewer class. In that case, when you attempt to use the ImageViewer class, you'll see the following error in the output panel.
....The class 'ImageViewer' could not be loaded
Conversely, if you mistakenly named your class Imageviewer (with lowercase "v") but named your .as file ImageViewer.as (with an uppercase "V"), Flash will find the ImageViewer.as file but will complain that it can't find a class in that file matches the filename. In such a case, when you attempt to use ImageViewer, you'll see the following error:
....The class 'ImageViewer' needs to be defined in a file whose relative path in 'ImageViewer.as'
If, down the road, you decide to change the class name, you must also change the filename and vice versa"
Simply stunning. Thank you for that needless waste of my time. You'll also read things in the book like this:
"Find a (non-progressive format) JPEG image on your system. If you work in an office, ensure that the content of the JPEG you choose is appropriate for the office environment."
It's this kind of stuff that just makes you want to scream at times! We all know that Colin Moock is an incredible pioneer and does some inspirational stuff, and has been kind enough to share his knowledge over the years ... but JUST GET ON WITH IT!!!!!!!
I can't fault the code (what little there is) in the book, and what you learn is solid, but I am now reading this book for the THIRD time (and it's 500 pages), as to be honest, the first two times I was so bored, bored, bored, that it is only now sinking in.
Sadly, I haven't seen any other well-written AS2 books out there. I also have Jeff Tapper's "Object-Oriented Programming with ActionScript 2.0", which as the other reviews say, is full of typos (it's as if the code sections were mangled by some kind of obfuscator!) but at least has a wealth of OOP stuff for you to get your teeth into.
Please, Keith Peters, if you're reading ... write the book that this should have been! Your writing style and examples are far and away in a different league to this.
|
|
OOP and Actionscript 2.0
|
|
First of all, Colin makes this book an extension for his exploration of Flash Programming after his book ActionScript for Flash MX The Definitive Guide, which explain the ActionScript Fundamentals but Essential ActionScript 2.0 focuses almost exclusively on the Object-Oriented Programming aspects (in) ActionScript. The book is divided to three main sections:- 1. Part I: The ActionsScript 2.0 language: discusses the theory of OOP in general, and itsimplementation in Action Script in particular. Colin really is great in clarifying the concepts in a simple manner with examples. 2. Part II: Application Development: discusses the concepts for the practical application, which is covered in the first section with examples describe the process of designing and deploying and object-oriented application. 3. Part II: Design Pattern Examples: Colin means by that how to apply OOP strategies to a many approaches to various programming situations in Macromedia Flash. · New to OOP Programmers will learn the basics and how to apply it.
· Familiar with OOP Programmers will gain experience with Flash-based OOP.
· Experienced Flash developers and programmers coming from other languages will enjoy the deep coverage and expertise in Essential ActionScript 2.0. Finally and in sum, this book reviews the Object-Oriented definite structures in ActionScript 2.0 realistically to get benefit from applying these concepts through the abstract theory and the practical tips.
|
|
|
Write real applications with Actionscript
|
|
Actionscript 2 has effectively promoted AS1 to be a 'real' programming language for big, complex Flash applications that would be difficult to do with AS1. This book covers all you need to create robust AS2 OOP classes and full applications in a style that Java & C++ programmers will be familiar with. Moock's writing style is just so good at explaining fiddly subjects in pleasant bite-sized chunks. The examples are excellent, taking you step by step through the creation and structure of full AS2 applications. The coverage of how to use and create your own flash components is also excellent. An essential purchase for the serious Flash developer and a perfect partner to 'Actionscript: The Definitive Guide'
|
|
|
The essential guide for wannabe OOPs moving from AS1 to AS2.
|
If you, like me, got very good at designing prototypes and objects for Flash MX and want to know how to migrate to AS 2.0, or if you simply want to learn how to build proper object oriented classes, then this is an extremely well written book which has an in-depth explanation of all that you need.
It is not a beginners' guide, but for those who already understand ActionScript, it is the way to go.
|
|
|
United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada