Foundation ActionScript for Flash MX [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Sham Bhangal (Author), Ben Renow-Clarke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2002

One of the biggest compliments paid to a friends of ED book last year was Amazon.com's judgment that "Foundation Actionscript is perhaps one of the finest introductory programming books ever written".

With the release of Flash MX, scripting in Flash has moved from being a desirable asset to an essential skill in the world of web design. It's also become a whole lot more difficult, and the major advances with Flash MX are code based. If you're scared of the idea of code, but even more scared of missing out, this is the book for you.

This is no simple re-write - with the help of friends of ED Flash guru Sham Bhangal, Foundation ActionScript has been re-written from beginning to end, with the addition of substantial new material to reflect the major changes bought about with Flash MX.

If you've never coded in Flash, you're going to want to very soon. This book will make that desire reality, with fully worked examples and a chapter-by-chapter case study that turns into a fully fledged top ActionScript site by the end of the book.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sham Bhangal started out as an Engineer, specializing in industrial computer based display and control systems whilst freelancing as a web designer in his spare time. The web design took up more and more of his time until the engineering had to go. He has been a key friend of ED since the early days, and his past successses contributions to the Foundation Flash5, Flash 5 Studio, and Foundation Photoshop - as well as authoring the original Foundation ActionScript.

Product Details

• Paperback: 500 pages
• Publisher: Wrox Press; illustrated edition edition (June 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 190345073X
• ISBN-13: 978-1903450734
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,727,034 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Those who "can" can't always teach..., October 27, 2002

By 

B. Coppola (Macomb, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Foundation ActionScript for Flash MX (Paperback)

Have you ever taken a class from someone who clearly knew the subject forward and backward, but couldn't communicate it to you on your level? This book is a lot like that.

This book is frustrating, at least for a beginner. The authors make the mistake of assuming that writing in a "conversational" style and throwing analogies at you thick and fast are sufficient to instruct a non-programmer or beginner. Instead, they confuse you by "over-explaining" some straightforward ideas, and other times by using needlessly complex examples and exercises that incorporate advanced concepts before the learner is ready; then saying, in effect, "don't worry about that other stuff yet, we were just trying to show you "x". Well, why not come up with an example that just showed us "x" without all that other stuff? Or just give a concise explanation of it?

In my opinion both as an often "naive" learner and as a professional in the field of instructional design, I think the gold standard in teach-yourself computer texts for beginners are the Lynda Weinmann H.O.T. books. Alas, they don't have one for ActionScript.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Better already know what you're doing, October 27, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Foundation ActionScript for Flash MX (Paperback)

This book is like many others written for those who don't already know Actionscipt--it starts out explaining concepts slowly and then takes giant leaps shortly afterwards. This wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't many wasted hours trying to get script to work only to find that I had stumbled upon yet another error not accounted for on the Friends of Ed errata page. I sent multiple e-mails, one which points out something I'm SURE is an error (and it took me a very long time trying to figure it out) and nothing was done. I had another problem with script I'd typed. I checked over and over to make sure I'd gotten the syntax correct, and I had. Then I cut and pasted the FOE coding that I'd downloaded, and guess what? It didn't work either! But when I looked at the rest of the .FLA I saw that the FOE people used different settings than they used in the book. Seems someone decided that some variables needed some tweaks but failed to put it either in the book or on the errata page. I even postponed reviewing this book so that I could give the FOE people a chance to rectify their goofs. But they didn't.

This book is chatty, but chatty doesn't equate to good instruction. If you want to learn Actionscript and know nothing about it or Javascript already, you're out of luck.

I believe that previous viewers might've written so positively because they didn't follow the book step-by-step as I did. If they had, they would've had problems, too. Either that or I have a different version of the book than they do.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book for beginning actionscript auteurs, March 12, 2003

By 

Vadim Sprikut (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Foundation ActionScript for Flash MX (Paperback)

This book is a solid starting point for people interested in making dynamic flash sites with actionscript. It's written in a casual tone, so it's not too dry. However, I do recommend some knowledge of object oriented programming (javascript) because the logic of writing actionscript will be foreign to people who are beginners or have only worked with HTML. However, the lessons are presented in an easy to understand way, with concepts that can be applicable to your own work. There are occasional lapses, such as the author's failure to explain just how a layer mask works, even though it is a necessary step in several lessons (I had to go to macromedia's site for a quick tutorial). Overall, as a relative novice, I have found it helpful and it will be useful as a reference tool after I have completed the lessons.