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 enlarge | Authors: Rich Shupe, Zevan Rosser
Publisher: O'Reilly/Adobe Developer Library
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $22.99
You Save: $17.00 (43%)
New (32) Used (6) from $22.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 5075
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 382
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 8 x 1
ISBN: 059652787X
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.696
EAN: 9780596527877
ASIN: 059652787X
Publication Date: January 4, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: All orders ship same business day via standard shipping (USPS Media Mail) if received by 1 PM CST.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Not for a beginner July 30, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I'm a beginner to Flash but not to scripting, programming and graphical applications in general. If you're looking for a true beginners book skip this one. The book states right on the cover that its aimed at "those new to ActionScript, visual learners" Well I've programmed in many languages, and am fluent in all kinds of applications and this book is definitely NOT targeted at a non-programmer or a beginner.
The book immediately jumps to jargon frequently asking the reader to ignore the jargon as it will be explained later. For example the initial chapters are laced with descriptions of "class" but the actual discussion of class does not occur until chapter six. That's a long time to go trying to read pages of class discussion with no clear definition.
The book states clearly that it is not a reference. This means it can avoid creating a strong set of appendices or a good glossary. Don't know a term (which if you're new you won't), don't turn to this book to fill it in. Want a list of possible commands - look elsewhere.
The book claims to be for "visual learners" yet most of the examples do virtually nothing visually. Instead the example are a bunch of esoteric theoretical examples meant to give you the "philosophy" about using a particular command or structure, instead of a commonplace example. When the commonplace examples are given, frequently they're at the end of the chapter and not described - instead "by now you should be able to understand how this code works."
The book does not strongly tie ActionScript to the flash timeline (this will get me flamed). Sure they state often that you now can tie your actions to objects, but if you're a beginner then you need to describe how.
The book is on its first printing and is filled with errors and typos. Luckily I have a background in working with edge programs and first printings always come with this burden. Here the burden is deadly to the beginner who can easily spend hours trying to figure out whats going wrong only to learn it was a typo.
Now all that said, this is a good book. The authors are trying. I think the real problem is the authors are use to teaching this subject in person to a class, using the book as a class guide. With an instructor available the book could be used. However without an instructor present, this is a terrible uphill battle.
 Authors need to add testing to there book writing process July 28, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The book seems to be OK with one MAJOR PROBLEM. This book is trying to teach a person actionscripting with code examples that have errors in them. This make the learning process harder because when you write the code from the book and it doesn't work it is hard to find figure out where the code went wrong. A note to the authors there is a simple way to check the code before you put it in the book Flash has a TEST MOVIE ability. There is a website that has the correct code in it. This makes figuring out where the code breaks down difficult. I'm just a beginner it would be nice to just look for my errors not both. I've been fixing the code errors in the book with a red pencil, most of the code examples I've been through have little red notes added
Good book so far July 23, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm a total beginner to learning computer languages, looking into Visual basic, Java and Actionscript. I want to try to learn these on my own before having to pay a college professor thousands of dollars to teach me. I've been studying ActionScript 3.0 for some time now, using [...] video tutorials. The tutorials are nice, but they mostly just show you what to do and you copy the motions without really knowing what you're doing or why. I've found, while studying the video tutorials, that I needed something that could fill in the blanks. So far I'm really enjoying the book...wishing it would be just a little bit more descriptive for an absolute beginner like me, but I've really got no complaints. I think this would be a good book for anyone. i enjoy reading it.
 very strong teaching reference July 18, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I think "Learning Actionscript 3.0" by Rich Shupe and Zevan Rosser is an excellent resource and I recommend it highly. I am a programmer, and have enjoyed reading it. It is organized well and covers a lot of useful information for Flash designers.
I debated buying it, since there are a lot of references to Actionscript 3.0 on the Internet. However, Schupe and Rosser really do a good job of teaching the new Actionscript, using many examples that readers can download.
The transition from Actionscript 2.0 to 3.0 can be daunting for people. That's why a resource like this one can be appreciated. It starts out with fundamental concepts, then builds on them sequentially.
"Learning Actionscript 3.0" is a very good addition to a programmer's library.
Many Errors -Do Not Reccomend July 9, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I just hate trying to learn from a book that has errors! Is it that hard to get someone to check a book before releasing it? First of all, many of the example files that are available for download are named different than the book says they are. A lot of the code in the exercises doesn't even work! I spent hours unsuccessfully trying to do one of the exercises before I realized the code was incorrect. I had to sort through the misnamed example files and get the correct code, that should have been in the book. O'REILLY is getting worst and worst.
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