The Flash Connection Make mine Actionscript 3.0!

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If this book had an alternate title, it probably should be "How to do cool things with Flash." It manages to pack a lot of "how to" in-between its covers, and the examples and the codes given always seem to be so easy to follow. It's also very easy to find your way around the book, making it a valuable reference. In any case, I find myself turning back to this book a lot of times when I can't remember exactly how to do some thing or another.

I'll give you a few examples: I had encountered 9-slice scaling for movie clips in the online documentation and/or the help files, but never really understood what it was for or how it worked until I read this book. There is an excellent example using a speech balloon on page 220. Next example: Sometimes I forget what is the exact code for loading external images vs. loading images from the library. Loading images from the library is a bit more involved as it requires knowing how to use both the Bitmap and BitmapData classes. There are excellent examples of loading external images and library images starting on page 280. The explanations are really good and the code is straight to the point. Another example: The explanation of how to load external swf files is really good. That begins on page 173. The explanations of stage and root (and the accompanying illustrations) I found very helpful in furthering my understanding of how these things work in AS3. Another example: The chapter on Sounds is really good, with good help on how to understand the roles of the Sound, SoundChannel, and SoundTransform classes. Once again, the code is succinct and on target. Many more examples could be cited.

Also, while the word "actionscript" doesn't appear anywhere in the title, there is a lot of material on actionscript! And, deliciously, it's actionscript as it relates to Flash, which is what I'm always after!

Of course, no book can be all things to all people, and this book is not without a few weaknesses. For example, if you want material on how to write your own custom classes (and OOP in general), you won't find any of it here. Of course, the things the book tells you how to do can be written into classes, but you get my drift. Also, while the book touches on XML, it's a very brief treatment that probably should have been longer. Still, this is the book I most highly recommend to beginners with Flash and Actioncsript. You will most certainly find this book a valuable learning tool and resource.

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Note: There is a new edition of this book entitled "Flash CS4 Professional Advanced" by the same author. I don't myself have the newer edition, and haven't seen it, so I can't review it. But if I get one, I will update this article in the future. However, I think it's probably safe to assume that the CS4 edition is of the same high quality as the CS3 one, if not better.