ActionScript: Your visual blueprint for creating interactive projects in Flash CS4 Professional [Paperback]

Rob Huddleston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0470481943 | ISBN-13: 978-0470481943 | Edition: 1

Visual learners can get up and running quickly on ActionScript programming skills for Flash CS4

If you're a programmer who learns best when you see how something is done, this book will have you up and running with ActionScipt in no time. Step-by-step, two-page lessons show you the core programming foundations you must master to create rich Internet content using the preferred language for work with Flash. The visual approach breaks big topics into bite-sized modules, with high-resolution screen shots to illustrate each task.

You'll learn such skills as how to add interactivity, animate in code, and work with external content to create Flash projects with pizzazz.

• Designed for visual learners, with two-page lessons and step-by-step, fully illustrated instructions
• Covers foundation ActionScript, animating, interactivity, and working with external content
• Demonstrates using the Actions panel, syntax rules, and essential language foundations Shows how to use variables and arrays; write functions, classes, if/else statements, and loops; and work with static classes such as Math
• Explores essential techniques such as loading visual aspects at runtime, text from delimited text files and XML, and server-based assets using Flash Remoting
• Companion Web site features all the code that appears in the text, ready to plug into your Web pages

ActionScript: Your visual blueprint to creating interactive projects in Flash CS4 Professional is the visual learner's way to master ActionScript quickly and easily.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Welcome to the only guidebook series that takes a visual approach to professional-level computer topics. Open the book and you'll discover step-by-step screen shots that demonstrate over 125 key ActionScript techniques, including:

• Working with ActionScript syntax rules

• Setting instance properties in code

• Writing and calling functions

• Creating custom classes

• Defining events in a custom class

• Adding code to a MovieClip's Timeline

• Creating dynamic text fields

• Changing the speed of animation

• Using the FLVPlayback component visually

• Exchanging data with a server

• High-resolution screen shots demonstrate each task

• Succinct explanations walk you through step by step

• Two-page lessons break big topics into bite-sized modules

• "Apply It" and "Extra" sidebars highlight useful tips

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Visual; 1 edition (July 7, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470481943
• ISBN-13: 978-0470481943
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,221,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Has some really good points, but on the whole unsatisfying, February 21, 2010

By 

Tallgrass (somewhere) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ActionScript: Your visual blueprint for creating interactive projects in Flash CS4 Professional (Paperback)

I am currently trying to learn AS3 and this was one of the first books I bought. I bought it because in a cursory way, the book seemed to begin by quickly moving into OOP and I thought it would expand on the subject from there. But frankly the strength of this book is it's weakness. It treats every subject at the most basic, most simplistic, easy to understand way possible, but never every goes into any depth.

Essentially if you have never programmed before, and want a quick reference guide to extremely basic syntax, this is a good choice. If you are looking for something that goes into any depth, and has coding examples that are longer than 5 lines long, get something different. And if you are looking for something on AS3 Object Oriented programming steer very very clear because this book has absolutely nothing on the subject beyond one preliminary chapter, and a few other minor references.

2.0 out of 5 stars Tiny screen shots, small text, difficult to read, May 19, 2011

By 

Chick Newman - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: ActionScript: Your visual blueprint for creating interactive projects in Flash CS4 Professional (Paperback)

I agree with an earlier reviewer. The screen shots are teeny...essentially impossible to read, and much of the step by step code is also quite small and difficult to read, as well. Whenever I want to use this book, I have to bring a magnifying glass with me. I have written to the publisher complaining of the unreadability, and was sent some of the screen shots as jpgs, so at least I can look at them on the computer screen while looking at the book. But I've found this to be really cumbersome and often it is inconvenient. Had I realized that the print was going to be unreadable before purchasing the book, I'd have never bought it in the first place.

There are also some coding errors; in some instances, when trying to use an example from the book, and even the unmodified code that I actually downloaded from the book's website (and did not change), Flash complains that the code contains errors; trying to figure out what is wrong in each sample time consuming, since the in the book the author insists that all the code works great...but it doesn't and But Flash begs to differ. It's a standoff, and the reader learns nothing in the process.

I wouldn't recommend purchasing this book, though I think in its simplicity, it might have been a good choice for action script beginners had the print been readable and the code been debugged before publication.

2.0 out of 5 stars You'll Go Blind Straining Your Eyes, May 12, 2011

By 

J. Dadlez "Dadio" (Riverside, CA.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: ActionScript: Your visual blueprint for creating interactive projects in Flash CS4 Professional (Paperback)

This book has a lot of good information in it. It's MAJOR drawback, which makes you want to chuck it, are the microscopic screenshots of the examples.

I wear reading glasses as it is, and these screenshots of the examples make this book almost worthless to me.

I would've paid more for a larger formatted book. I guess these guys wanted to make it on the cheap.

I don't recommend this book.