Customer Reviews

Using ActionScript 2.0 Components with Macromedia Flash 8

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

 

 

The first 190 pages deal with how to customize components and how to create your own components - basically information found in the Flash Help section.

The last 1528 pages are a *replica* of the Flash Help - Components Language Reference section.

1908 pages of the Flash Help section without word search capabilities!

The only positive thing I can say is if these five authors are responsible for the Flash Help section, they did a great job. I just don't like paying for photo copies of something I already have.

This book was put out by Macromedia itself. Based on the title, I expected an original book that would be well written and instructive, to complement the more dry technical online documention. I opened the book and found it largely an effort to make a quick buck, providing little that is not already freely available on-line. The first section of the book is not original as another reviewer has pointed out, however at least it organizes some help section material into a readable flow. The bulk of the book is just reprint filler. I feel I got "taken" on this purchase. As you may have seen, Macromedia was notorious for having complaints over its published books. Hopefully Adobe will operate this end of the business in a different fashion.

if you are a beginner or intermediate, this book is not for you, it is for advanced programmers, in ActionScript 2.

Also, 80% of the book is a waste of paper, nothing more than printed help you can get from the help menu or online support.

the good thing, is that it covers 90% of the advanced topics, in my case, I spend about 2 years learning action script 2, it misses how to merge 2 or more components in 1 single distributable component, also it misses how to include custom graphic component inspector.

so, with that in mind, I give it 3 stars.

This is nothing more than a printed version of the documentation that ships with Flash 8. As this is stated in the description of the book, and several of the reviews here, it shouldn't surprise anyone when they receive the book in the mail expecting more.

Everything contained in this book can be found in the help files and PDF docs included with Flash 8, but it's still great to have a printed reference that you can actually make notes in and bookmark. The docs could use a little more in the way of examples, but if all you're looking for is a good printed version of the Flash reference materials, this is a good resource.

What are Flash Components? According to this work's many authors Flash components are "movie clips with parameters that allow you to modify their appearance and behavior" (p. 11). The main purpose of this book is to show you how to use Flash 8 components to facilitate the development of applications while providing a standard, yet customizable, user interface. The first 200 pages of this nearly 1800 page book provide detailed tutorials in all aspects of the Flash components. Familiar Flash components are such user interface controls as scrollbars and scrollpanes; however, there are also non-visual Flash components. The rest of the book is a components language reference that provides information on the edition, usage, parameters, description and examples for each.

When I opened this book it was because I was more interested in learning how to more elegantly "skin" existing Flash components. Although I had used scrollpanes and some other interface elements, I had not been able to achieve the look that I desired. Luckily for me, how to modify Flash's existing components, and much more, are elegantly covered in this book's first five chapters. Each chapter provides numerous code examples and tutorials to teach you the in's and out's of using listeners, setting focus and skinning user interface elements. The thorough step-by-step instructions will be invaluable to anyone wanting to learn more about what components are and how to control their look and behaviors.

Later chapters in the book cover how to get started in creating your own components. Although for the moment this has less appeal to me, any developer building applications with Flash would find these sections of immense interest.

As others have noted, this book is available as a PDF from Adobe / Macromedia and also in the Help section within Flash. This is also stated in the description of the book, so I wasn't surprised at what I received.

If you are the type of person who gets by with online documentation and/or PDFs, then don't buy this book. I am a professional Flash developer and have other Flash developers working for me, and I find printed books indispensable when used in conjunction with the Help system.

If you want a single printed volume documenting all of the components that come with Flash 8, then this is the book you want.

Would be nice to have more examples.
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Cheers.
LordAlex Leon
www.lordalex.org