The Flash Connection Make mine Actionscript 3.0!

Buy me at amazon.com. This book should be in the collection of every serious Actionscript 3.0 programmer. And therein lies the distinction. Don't get it if you aren't or don't intend to be a serious programmer. Don't get it if you want to do cool things with Flash and thought you might casually add a few scripts here and there. But do get it if you can't get enough of Actionscript 3.0 and you have a passion for programming. If that's you, you will find this book a deep well that you will return to again and again.

The back cover says: If you have no prior programming knowledge, this book gently guides you on your journey toward Actionscript proficiency.

Don't you believe it, folks. I hope Colin Moock didn't write that line, which has probably persuaded more than one unwary beginner (or more casual programmer) to add this to their shopping cart, much to their probable later regret. The truth is that if you have no prior programming knowledge, you are going to be lost and understand only about 15 to 20 percent of this book. The book seems to have two ends: easy and advanced. If you are a beginner, there is the Virtual Zoo program, a simple Actionscript program using classes that is intended to give you the basics of programming with classes and objects. At the other end are all kinds of advanced topics like XML, player security, namespaces, event handling, garbage collection, and on and on it goes. The trouble is that there is no middle bridge joining the two ends. You seemingly can't get from beginner to advanced using this book because the middle ground is missing.

On the other hand, this book has tons of valuable material if you are a serious programmer, and here it really shines. What a monumental task it must have been to write this book (almost 1000 pages), and it is really, really, rich in material. One of my favorite things in this book is the chart on page 459, which shows the inheritance tree for display objects. Other parts of the book that have been instructive to me are the chapters on event handling and the event flow. There was simply no other book that would ever have made me understand the event flow, but I had to read that chapter about 10 times before it sunk in (you have to get used to the terms he uses like "ancestor listener" and such). And there are too many other parts that have been helpful in other areas to even list them here, and the book continues to be a valuable resource for me.

This book tries very hard to be "tool agnostic," meaning that it tries to stick to teaching Actionscript 3.0 only, without regard to whether you are using Flash, Flex, AIR, or whatever. This is okay, I guess, but I would like to see something from Colin Moock where he does write extensively about the tools. Especially Flash.

I would love to have the knowledge of Colin Moock, yet be able to explain it all to a five year old. If you are a beginner, I wouldn't say you shouldn't consider this book at all, but I would say at least make an informed choice. If you are (or want to be) a serious programmer, and you love Actionscript 3.0, then do get it by all means. In either case, don't expect easy explanations or step-by-step tutorials.