Flash 8 ActionScript Bible

by Robert Reinhardt and Joey Lott

To create Flash applications that sizzle, you have to learn the code. In this comprehensive guide to the latest version of ActionScript, the object-oriented scripting language for Macromedia Flash,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 047177197X
• ISBN13: 9780471771975
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 836 Pages
• Weight: 2.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 7.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Perfect

If you are familiar with flash and/or programming at all then this book is for you. Together with the online Flash documentation from Adobe's website, I can find out how to do anything I want to. The book gives great examples of everything that it discusses. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to make killer Flash content. It's true that it requires a little bit of programming background to understand what this book is saying sometimes but let me emphasize that it takes minimal experience.

Finally - a book with meat!

If you're a hard-core developer with a background in "real" OOP (not "Object-Oriented-Like" scripting tools such as ActionScript, but rather languages such as C++, C# etc.), then this book is for you. Previously, I bought 3 other books on ActionScript (including "Training From The Source") trying to find one that didn't take the pansy "click here, drag that, type this" approach - I wanted a book that told me "WHY" I should do something and show me the code to do it - no pictures, please, just code. Without knowing why you're doing something, you have just relegated yourself to doing only what others have done before you - you will never go beyond that. This book gives you background on why things are the way they are, when it might change, and what to do in the meantime, and the pros and cons of each choice. The only weakness I see is that it covers a lot of detail about progamming basics that take up pages needlessly for the more advanced developer. But you can always just skip those sections - those topics make the book more appealing to newbies. I myself did learn a lot about RegEx that I never knew before. I'm sure this book has other shortcomings somewhere, but I can't see it yet because I'm too tickled to find one that talks directly to folks who don't hold that funky "timeline" thing as the Holy Grail.

An Absolute Necessity (spelling?) if you need to learn ActionScript

This is the book that really put me over the top in learning ActsionScript. I still use it today as a reference. The examples are excellent and easy to follow. They don't get too deep too fast and by the end, you have a great handle on the language. I will agree with the reviewer who said you should have some knowledge of programming to being with. However, having said that, I only had a little knowledge of C++ via Jesse Liberty's books. So I was no programmer. I'm still no expert, but I've come a long way since reading this book. This book is well worth the price.

The best Flash ActionScript resource available.

I've owned all the Flash Bibles by Reinhardt & Lott, since Flash MX. I have always found each of the books to be a great resource. You might have noticed that Flash's built-in help resource is aweful... the search never finds exactly what you're looking for. The index in the Flash 8 Bible is awesome - most of the time you can find exactly what you are looking for. If you're new to Flash, there are many great tutorials in this book, as well as a CD full of completed tutorial files and more. I definetly reccomend the Flash 8 ActionScript Bible over all other Flash ActionScript books.