A great 'user manual' for actoinscript 3
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This is indeed a carefully prepared,well written book for people who want to work with actionscript 3. I already have some experience with both Flash 8 and actionscript 2 before reading this. But I can see that the author has taken the trouble to make sure that people who are completely new to programing will be comfortable with this book. Lot's of authors just promise 'this book assumes no prior knowledge' in the preface and by the time you reach chapter 1 the promise is broken. But this is one of those rare tech books where the author keeps the promise.
But that doesn't mean it is just a beginner's 'quick start' guide. Although I have flash and AS 2 experience (and lots of programing experience with Java etc - and as a result I ended up skimming through quite a lot of stuff) this was a very useful guide to help me get started with Action script 3. I would recommend it for anyone who wants to work with AS3. But if you already have some programing experience and don't have the patience to sit and read for long then the Actionscript 3 cookbook (Joey Lott ) may give you a faster start. It uses a purely 'hands on' approach from the start. So that may be worth a look especially if you don't need a detailed introduction to programing. But it might be a tough job choosing between the two books. I am using them both and if you have the money that's what I would suggest - buy them both!
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The "missing manual" on Flash
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One of the things that makes me laugh (and cry) about Adobe's official documentation for their Flex 2 product is that it implicitly assumes that the reader is familiar with Flash. Given that Flex is supposed to be a development environment targeted at traditional developers (familiar with Eclipse and source code control and the like), you'd think that it would be a fair assumption that at least a significant share of the readers of the Flex 2 doc set would be Java, C++ or C# programmers who are keen to build rich clients in Flex.
I guess that other newcomers to Flash will probably have the same frustrating time as I did trying to figure out how (and when) the AVM2 dispatches mouse, focus and keyboard events, how the display list is managed, how to refer to the properties of a symbol instance created with Flash CS3, and how to draw lines and shapes etc...
This book is the essential "missing manual" on the AVM for developers who don't have a strong Flash background. Chapter 29, for example, is the perfect introduction to the Flash CS3 IDE.
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