Customer Reviews

Macromedia Flash MX 2004 ActionScript Bible

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Okay, I have to confess, when I see a member of Wiley's "Bible" series on the shelf, I cringe. These books seem to be about the ugliest ones in the store, and I'm fortunate to live near Powell's Technical Bookstore in Portland, Oregon... so I see a lot of them. They seem deliberately designed to be as huge as possible, almost wastefully so. I disapprove of the inclusion of a CD; this, too, seems wasteful. The whole design of these books is so hideous that one is bound to realize that it was produced by the same publisher as the "Idiots" books, the main distinction being that the Dummy books are designed to be small, and these are designed to be big.

However, this book is great. It tells you EVERYTHING about ActionScript 2.0 programming. The examples are excellent and work. They include lots of tiny but handy class libraries that you can start using right away. They cover everything, even components, with a breadth that astounds. This book has answered pretty much every question I've had about AS2 already!

Both of the authors are first-rate. I just don't have enough good things to say about this book! I was so surprised! Usually I go straight for the O'Reilly books, for a number of reasons, but since one of this book's authors is also the author of the ActionScript Cookbook (O'Reilly and Associates), which is fabulous also, I decided to give it a look.

I recommend this book for anyone and everyone learning ActionScript 2.0 at this time. Until O'Reilly updates its catalog, this book really is the Bible on the subject. Five stars!

Noting the good reviews, I purchased this book 2 weeks ago. Despite one of the authors having worked for O'Reilly (on an excellent ActionScript Cookbook), this book has not attained O'Reilly quality.

The real problem I had with this book is the lack of indexing; I am of the opinion that a desk reference--particularly a thick one--can only be as good as its index. All the knowledge I needed may have been in the 891 pages of this book, but if it's not in the index, it's a moot point. Case in point, I wanted to see all the properties, events and methods of the MovieClip object at a glance, a reasonble thing to ask from a complete ActionScript reference. I looked for "MovieClip->properties", "Properties->MovieClip", but no entry for either! Some of what I wanted I found in the MovieClip and Button chapter by chance, but scattered, not concisely listed.

So I returned this book and bought both of Moock's recent offerings instead. The only reason I did not get Moock's books first is the fact that it cost twice as much since I really needed his ActionScript MX book AND the ActionScript 2.0 supplement. I wish he had simply updated the former book for MX 2004 and AS 2.0 rather than go the supplement route, but the extra cost is worth it and I'm glad to be free of the Bible.

I have to say, this book is very comprehensive but if you already own the Flash MX actionsript bible, then this might not be worth your while since it is so similar. Except for the code being updated to Actionscript 2.0's format (whcih really isnt too much of a difference), I didn't find too many new things.
If you're new to actionscript, DONT GET THIS BOOK!!! This book is definitely not a first-stepper for any non-programmer, it is more like a 2nd book you'll want to get your hands on after you've taken your first steps in actionscript. After reading this book, you'll get a full thorough view of all the capabilities of actionscript, but it'll take perhaps half a year of doing projects in actionscript before you'll really appreciate the amount of info this book has. Oh, but the downside is, if you just take your time to read the help within Flash MX 2004, you'll pretty much get just as much detailed info about all the methods and stuff. But some people prefer to have a book in hand while others don't mind reading on screen... I'd say this is a good rference book, but dont expect it to teach you to code, more like expect it to help you grasp actionscript's power better and more...er..fully.

If you've never used Macromedia's Flash before, in any version, then beware! The size of this book can be offputting. But the authors stress that the material is given at an easy enough pace for you to assimilate.

The early chapters present a general discussion of the various web technologies and the directory structure of a Flash project. Basic but important stuff. Hopefully, you'll find the arrangement of directories and their files to be intuitive. Because when you get into heavy Flash usage, you'll inevitably need to access some of these files directly, outside the Flash development environment.

Perhaps the greatest emphasis in the book is on ActionScript 2. Conceptually, it's about the same level of programming complexity as JavaScript. This version is now a full object oriented language. Which should please those of you coming from C++, Java or C# backgrounds.

One allure of the book is the material on video editing. In recent years, disks and memory have become cheap enough, and cpus fast enough, to cause a flowering of such editing. Which has driven the development of the many editing capabilities in Flash.

It's not for beginners ? ok, it's not.

It's mainly for intermediate readers and it goes reasonably deep and covers an impressive wide range of topics.

It's not an reference guide, if you need one, get the ActionScript reference guide from Macromedia.

If you want to learn Object-Oriented Development with ActionScript 2.0 the Moock's book is the best choice. For me, the ActionScript Bible and the Moock's book are special volumes.

This hands-on book is a must-read for anybody starting out with Flash MX 2004. It is concise but filled with actual screen shots, and the step by step instructions are clear and easy to follow. All of the examples that you are asked to work through actually ...work, and there is no annoying disconnect between what the book describes and what really happens with your own Flash environment on your computer. Interspersed here and there are valuable tips and explanations about Flash's features. I have read half a dozen books on Flash, and so far this is the best and most enjoyable.

Very comprehensive. This book covers just about every bit of ActionScript code you can imagine. I consider myself a novice-intermediate Actionscriptor and I was extremely pleased with how well laid out and comprehensive the material is in this book. I could think of nothing that was not covered with an easy to follow example and detailed explaination of the code used. I have been searching for a ActionScript 2.0 definitive reference for sometime now and I am very happy to say that this book is it. Bottomline: This one lives up to the name, you will thank yourself for getting it.

This book wasn't meant to be read in sequential order, but that is what I did. I read through about half of it in about a month in a half and thought the examples were really solid. A great book now since (AS3)Actionscript 3 has come out and the value of the book is decreased sharply. Since AS2 and AS3 are very similar, it is a great way to get your feet wet with the language and get a great handle on the powerful and robust language of Actionscript.

Only 4 stars since it is a little outdated. - not by that much at the time of writing though.

I haven't read the entire book, yet. But, what I've read it seems well written and easy to understand. There are some areas that I wished they would have put more detail into and some that are repeated so many time, I want to say "Alright, already, I get it".

I'm relatively new to ActionScript and have read a number of Flash and ActionScript books. If you only have one ActionScript 2.0 book for Flash MX 2004, then this should be the one.

I am no dummy when it comes to using software or teaching books, but this one is over my head. I am a beginner with Flash MX 2004. I would prefer hands on, step by step tutorials....at least until I have a grasp of the basics. At over 1200 pages, I am sure that I will be using this book as a reference in the future. For now, I need to start a little slower.