Customer Reviews

Object-Oriented Programming with ActionScript

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The best part of Flash MX is the almost absolute control you have over Flash via ActionScript. People can get by without tapping into this rich functionality and still do well with the new non-ActionScript features but most Flash developers want more.

Though I'm not a Flash historian, I believe Branden and Sam were critical in the strong hack-together OOP movement at the end of Flash 5's life and genesis of Flash MX's birth. This is the kind of insider perspective that, if you are interested in taking advantage of ActionScript MX-style, will prove very handy in your development.

Branden and Sam have written this book with a kind of geek wonder and gee-whiz discovery that speaks to my programmer heart. They do a great job so describing hard-won ActionScript-specific coding practices and techniques along side actual code samples.

I have been programming professionally for a while but the looseness of Actionscript is enough to drive me insane (i.e. AS's unwillingness to throw errors on undefined functions or variables combined with my horrible spelling skills). The author's tricks like the _resolve function on page 68 which can catch undefined function calls, as they as called, are a GODSEND!

The book covers setting up a good Flash MX development layout, having data-aware components, XML, creating Heap structures, debugging techniques and building components from scratch with an Actionscript bent. It also has two great guest chapter writers: Andreas Hiem (Server Integration) and Nigel Pegg (Components).

I'm definitely gushing here but there is no fluff or wasted space here. I think they did a great job of sharing their knowledge and I hope, when they collect enough new material, they will write another book....

When I got this book delivered to me, I had already seen a few chapters previous to the book going to print. I already knew how important and how well-written this book was going to be. Being able to read through the whole thing, all I can say is this book is a MUST HAVE. This book is on par with Collin Moock's now famous book. In fact in some ways, this book is actually better!

Flash MX has brought a lot more capabilities to the table - but implementing them isn't always very easy. This book explains OOP in a way everyone can understand, then presents real-world situations where you'd benefit from this development approach.

Components are covered in depth, and even Nigel Pegg from Macromedia chimes in with some of his own chapters. The book covers OOP principles, how to conduct OOP in Flash, covers component creation, working with components that already exist, implementing live previews with components, debugging guidance, using ASFunction with text fields, passing variables to from, data structures, and they even close the book out with some useful bits of AS code you might be able to reference for your own projects.

This is an amazing resource, artfully and precisely written, by some of the most talented coders on the planet. I highly reccommend this title.

I've been coding hardcore ActionScript for a couple years now, and doing OOP in Java and other languages for much longer than that. I still learned a LOT from this book.

The authors spell out many things that you otherwise have to learn on your own, through exhaustive trial and error.

This book, along with Colin Moock's, is among the few that truly delve into Advanced Topics. (Some other books call themselves Advanced but often just briefly describe the Advanced features without giving real-life examples).

The authors do a great job explaining the application of OOP techniqes in ActionScript. A warning to novices though: you'll get a lot more out of this book if you already have some knowledge of OOP!

They cover many other topics in depth, with actual code samples, including:

* Design Patterns for Flash, including a Model-View-Presenter sample
* Events, Callbacks and Listeners, and how to define your own Custom Events
* Data-Aware Components using the DataProviderClass
* Anti-Distortion in FUI-style Components
* Building your own Components, including Live Preview
* "Textfield Mangling" and HTML text fields
* Remote Debugging
* Flash Remoting

There's a lot more too. It's hard to get accurate information about any of these topics anywhere else--even on the Macromedia website--so a book that collects them all in one place is a godsend.

The writing style is lively and to-the-point, and the book design is clean, readable, and attractive. I highly recommend this book for all advanced ActionScript programmers who want to refine their craft.

I've worked with Flash for many years. I've also been programming in Pascal, C, C++ for many years. This book helped me for the first time tie the OOP concept to Flash movie clips, frames, sound objects, and timelines.

I didn't need a book with pages of code examples. I just needed to have a good explaination and short examples of how the components work or how to manipulate the XML object.

In a way, this book serves as a refresh course for people who are familiar with tools such as Visual Basic and have always thought Flash is just for animations.

This book is for Flash 6, the concept is still the same with Flash 7 and ActionScript 2.0

If you are a typical Flash developer, you first encountered Flash as a design environment, and then you began learning Actionscript, the scripting language for Flash. You can find a lot of books teaching Actionscript on the shelves, but most do not go very deep. What is given to you, usually, is a how-to-code course for a language which is very similar to Javascript, and how to use it in the Flash environment. However, Actionscript can be a much more sophisticated beast in the rights hands, especially in its last "MX" incarnation. And here comes "Object-Oriented Programming with ActionScript". This fine book is divided in three parts. The first is about Object-Oriented Programming in ActionScript: after a crash course in OOP, the ActionScript implementation of OOP is presented (and if you already had contact with OOP in your life, with Java for example, you could be surprised about some interesting features). A full example of game design with OOP Actionscript is then shown. The second part of the book is about Components, which is a new feature of Flash MX, and which is very important if you don't want to reinvent the wheel every time you have to program something. The final part of the book contains a collection of mixed and useful topics: debugging techniques, server integration, text fields wizardry, data structures, and more. Warning: this is a book for experienced programmers. You are supposed to know ActionScript pretty well in order to understand it (if you don't, New Riders also has some nice entry-level books about ActionScript). But if your ActionScript experience is good, you can't miss this one. The information provided here is available nowhere else. Recommended.

Why does a book entitled "Object-Oriented Programming with ActionScript" only include 3 chapters (plus one "real-world" example chapter) on OOP? With 16 chapters and 400 pages, this is all the OOP we get?

I guess the New Riders marketing folks decided the Flash book market needed a book with OOP in its title (whether they had enough OOP material to fill a book or not).

To make matters worse, the OOP chapters in this book assume you are already intimately familier with OOP and just need an overview of how it works (or doesn't work) in AS. This is certainly not a book for Actionscripters who want to learn OOP!

The authors are clearly experts in their field but alas, an expert does not always a writer make! I often found Mr. Hall's writing to be obtuse and overly verbose. Some of his "explanations" had me more confused than when I started!

Now with that all said you may think I hated the book but actually I found quite a few useful nuggets...

- chapter 1 has some very good advice on optimizing your setup of the Flash environment
- chapters 6-10 provide useful information on components -- both their useage and creation
- chapter 11 provides some nice debugging tips
- the remaining chapters provide a variety of useful techniques for the AS programmer

Bottom line, I bought a used copy of the book and felt it was worth the price; had I paid a higher price I would not have been happy with it.

I heard that this book had changed the way some programmers viewed ActionScript and I just had to check it out.

I didn't plan on reading 5 chapters on components. Now I wish there were more.

I do a lot of JavaScript and DHTML programming and learned some new tricks in this book. The event broadcaster was a real find and the coverage of event handling was outstanding. I would probably never have seriously considered using an object strictly for data-storage, other than an array, but the discussion on the DataProvider opens new doors.

I've written complex applications in ActionScript and still found this book to be an education. It makes me feel like everthing I've done in the past was a hack and that if I had read this first, I could have spent more time with the kids!

Subtle differences in programming style and the extensive coverage of components makes this book an ideal companion for ActionScript for Flash MX, The Definitive Guide. This is not the book to read the first day you download Flash MX, but explanations of the concepts are complete enough for the relative novice.

I also enjoyed the tales at the beginning of each chapter. Nice style!

Not only the best advanced Flash MX book, but an exceptional programming book in general. Most authors of programming texts are terrible writers, but Hall and Wan actually have a voice and personality that lifts them above average. Complex topics are presented clearly and with wit.

This book covers topics that even more recent Flash MX books don't: patterns (hello other Flash writers, this is important!), components for programmers, and data structures and how to use them.

Most of all Wan and Hall are real Flash experts, not writers who go from technology to technology, leaving generic books in their wake. These guys know how the program works and how to work with it. There's no idealized discussion of OOP that ignores how Flash actually works (as in the William Drol book), and there's no whining about Flash's unusual methods of inheirtance (for example). And their projects and examples seem real, no discussion of OOP that starts with "a Circle and Triangle are both types of Shape..."

Flash has come a long way from a toy to a full fledged development environment. With any such complexities, any methodologies that can help organize and standardize coding practices will always benefit a project. I have read through a bunch of Flash books and until now the only book that I have found useful has been ASDG by Orielly.

OOP with ActionScript is another book that every Flash developer should have on their shelf. I have researched and like many, thought and exchanged ideas on the implications of coding methods in Flash and what ramifications that has on the end product. This book is a must have for anyone who is serous about OOP with ActionScript or Component Development.

Having coded using OOP principals for a while now I still found this book very informative. My Specific interests lie in the decision on how to implement certain code in Flash. The book mentions what methods the authors prefer when implementing OOP and the other available options and why they decide to do things the way they did. This is very useful information that would take many days to collect and does not exist in any single source anywhere that I know of.

The coverage of components is also very good. I have built simple components and was looking to building more advanced components. This book covers all component principals from the beginning which just simple component to the complex components which use inheritance concepts....

With all this I would also say that this book is very good for anyone who has no background in OOP. I read through the beginning chapters and still got something out of them. It takes you from the beginning and leads you to understanding what OOP really is, and how it is implemented in Flash.

So now you are wondering who is this book not for? I would say anyone who has very minimal experience with ActionScript might want to hold off on this book (you will end up buying this book eventually though). This book will not tell you how to create conditional loops or target an object. It is a book for anyone who has been coding and is comfortable in Flash and is looking to improve and refine their skills the right way.

If you have been coding in Flash, read ASDG, are currently coding using OOP methods, or looking to learn what the OOP craze is all about then this book is a must have.

As a designer, I am often put off by the jargony text of programmer-centric books. From this book I have gained an understanding of Object-Oriented programming as related the Flash that I never had before. I'm wishing it will a little more concise, but It is truly inspiring.