Product Description

Well before Ajax and Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation hit the scene, Macromedia offered the first method for building web pages with the responsiveness and functionality of desktop programs with its Flash-based "Rich Internet Applications". Now, new owner Adobe is taking Flash and its powerful capabilities beyond the Web and making it a full-fledged development environment. The key to using this new IDE is ActionScript 3.0, the latest version of the Flash programming language. ActionScript 3.0 is a powerful object-oriented language, whose code executes up to 10 times faster than code from earlier versions, so even if you're familiar with ActionScript 2.0, tackling this upgrade will be a challenge. Our new Cookbook offers ready-made solutions that enable ActionScript developers of all levels to work with the new version right away. Rather than focus on theory, the "ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook" concentrates on the practical application of ActionScript, with more than 300 solutions you can use to solve a wide range of common coding dilemmas. You'll find recipes that show you how to: detect the user's Flash Player version or their operating system; build custom classes; format dates and currency types; work with strings; build user interface components; work with audio and video; make remote procedure calls using Flash Remoting and web services; load, send, and search XML data; and much, much more...Each code recipe presents the problem, solution, and discussion of how you can use it in other ways or personalize it for your own needs, and why it works. You can quickly locate the recipe that most closely matches your situation and get the solution without reading the whole book to understand the underlying code. Solutions progress from short recipes for small problems to more complex scripts for thornier riddles, and the discussions offer a deeper analysis for resolving similar issues in the future, along with possible design choices and ramifications. You'll even learn how to link modular ActionScript pieces together to create rock-solid solutions for Flex 2 and Flash applications. When you're not sure how ActionScript 3.0 works or how to approach a specific programming dilemma, you can simply pick up the book, flip to the relevant recipe(s), and quickly find the solution you're looking for.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14179 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 586 pages

From the Publisher
Well before Ajax and Windows Presentation Foundation, Macromedia Flash provided the first method for building "rich" web pages. Now, Adobe is making Flash a full-fledged development environment, and learning ActionScript 3.0 is key. That's a challenge for even the most experienced Flash developer. This Cookbook offers more than 300 solutions to solve a wide range of coding dilemmas, so you can learn to work with the new version right away.

About the Author
Joey Lott is the author of several O'Reilly books on Macromedia technology, including Flash 8 Cookbook, Programming Flash Communication Server, and the ActionScript Cookbook. He is also the author of Flash 8 ActionScript Bible (Wiley) and Advanced ActionScript with Design Patterns (Adobe Press, October 2006). Joey has been teaching Flash and ActionScript since 1999. His professional experience in the Internet industry includes co-founding RightSpring, Inc., as well as consulting for YourMobile/Premium Wireless Services (J2EE B2C application) and Ads.com (leading the development of a J2EE B2B application).

Darron Schall is an independent consultant specializing in the Flash Platform, with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from Lehigh University. He has been using ActionScript since the early days and is a prominent voice in the Flash and Flex communities. He is actively involved in the Open Source Flash movement with projects ranging from software development tools to a Commodore 64 emulator. Darron has spoken at various conferences about ActionScript, and has contributed to books and magazines. You can find his Flash Platform related weblog at http://www.darronschall.com.

Keith Peters is a Flash developer in the Boston area. He has been working with Flash since 1999 and is currently a Senior Flash Developer at Brightcove (http://www.brightcove.com). Keith has been a contributing author to nine other books on Flash and ActionScript. His personal website, http://www.bit-101.com, features an active blog, over 700 open source Flash experiments, and lots of other random Flash-related stuff.

Customer Reviews

Things you find out once you have bought this book
From page 1: 'This book assumes that you have obtained a copy of Flex Builder 2 and have succesfully installed it on your computer.' Then it continues by using (just) Flex Builder.

This is an unpleasant surprise for the vast majority of ActionScript users used to Flash, not Flex Builder. Adobe sells Flex Builder 2 at $499. Flex Builder is a combination of the Flex SDK and Eclipse, both Open Source and free to download. This raises the question as to why Flex is so expensive. You'll never find out from reading this book. Maybe we'll have to buy another book from Lott, 'Programming Flex 2', first?

Apart from this, there are too many 'dumb' typo's in this book - in contrast to the just two you'll find in the online errata - something you wouldn't expect from long-time serious publisher O'Reilly and an Adobe Developer Library book. Specially in computer code, every character counts, every developer is painfully aware.

Great Intro to Actionscript 3.0
For a programmer with some knowledge of programming in any language, ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook provides a great introduction to Actionscript.

The teaching method used is a hands one with the emphasis on doing examples rather than abstract theory. The examples cover a thorough and broad range of programming project requirements likely to be faced by any ActionScript 3 programmer e.g xml, web services, socket programming, sending and loading data,to name a few.

The first 2 chapters, 'Actionscript Basics' and 'Custom Classes' provide an excellent introduction to Actionscript 3. Basic programming tasks such as looping statements, timers,etc are covered with detailed examples.

ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook also introduces the preferred IDE for testing and working with Actionscript, 'Flex'. This is a major advantage to a beginner in AS 3.0 and Flex. A simple trace example introduces you to the entirely code based Flex IDE with its runtime environment and Flex debugger quicker than any theoretical description of Flex and 'trace'.
Advantages of using Flex should be immediately apparent.

By the end of chapter 2, 'Custom Classes', the reader should have a good enough foundation in Actionscript to duck and dive into the following chapters to test their well explained examples according to their interests and code requirements. Of particular interest to me were chapters and examples on 'Storing Persistent Data', 'Local Shared Objects', cross scripting, and communicating with other movies. Many examples show alternative approaches to the same project.

Though 'ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook' was first published in 2006 and refers to the Flex 2.0 IDE, Flex is currently at Flex 3.1, any reader interested in Actionscript 3.0 and Flex cannot but gain by acquiring their copy. Joey Lott, Darren Schall and Keith Peters, authors, are to be congratulated for their excellent work in providing us with an invaluable reference tool for Actionscipt projects.


Colm Brazel

20 August 2008

This is not a ccokbook
This book isn't what it seemed (at least what it seems to me).

It is an introduction to programming with ActionScript in Flex Builder 3. It may still be useful for those working in the free SDK and in Flash, but that isn't its focus and it doesn't discuss those tools. It also assumes you're working in pure ActionScript, so Flex authors (surely the biggest contingent using Flex Builder) will have to adapt as well.

But the things that annoyed me was the lack of real recipes here. To me cookbook should take a competent programmer and show best practice in common, but non-trivial areas.

Firstly, most of the recipes in the book are trivial. Things like "you need to iterate over the items in an array" - solution "use a for loop". or "you need to carry out an action conditionally" - "use an if statement". Most of the recipes just point to one or two API functions. That may be ok if you're completely new to actionscript - but in that case you'd want a proper guide that walked you throug the tech - the question and answer format isn't helpful if you're going through in sequence.

And secondly, the work isn't that well edited, and the solutions to some of the few more sophisticated problems are not optimal for performance.

I wouldn't recommend this book. It seems to not know who its audience is, and fall between the cracks.