ActionScript 3.0 Bible

I used this book extensively while learning Flash CS3 and CS4. I did not do much designing, mostly coding. I found this book to be exceptionally helpful as a developer with no background in any of the ECMA family script languages. I continued to use the book regularly over a period of two years and usually found it to be a great refresher or knowledge extender of the topic I needed that day. I highly recommend it. Although it is extensive, don't expect the book contain literally everything. It doesn't go into depth on the components (as I had wished) and one or two other times I came up empty, but I still don't think that demotes it to 4 stars. I found it to be the best laid out of all the ActionScript books I reviewed (and it pairs well with Moock). It is definitely my go-to-first book for ActionScript. If you are an absolute guru, maybe you don't need it (or any other book), otherwise get it and start reading and developing!

Anyone wanting to learn ActionScript 3.0 or just have an amazing reference book for ActionScript 3.0 should own this book. It's so easy to read through and it's definitely a book that allows you to be selective with which parts you read and which parts you skip over. I would recommend this book for beginners all the way up to experts.

Contradictory to most "Bibles" this book is not a thorough reference guide, meaning it does not break down every function or object with all of the property and methods. However, the examples are very clear and it's an excellent book to learn what you need and why you want it about Actionscript. I really enjoyed the simple explanations and for each topic I think just the right amount of information is presented without overloading you or leaving wondering what you're missing. Given that there is a wealth of detailed "reference" material at Adobe's site and built into Flex Builder, I think this book is an excellent complement to those materials. I recommend this book to anyone with a little programming experience looking to add ActionScript to their knowledgebase.

I am an experienced programmer who knows Java very well, and I was looking to learn ActionScript 3 so as to be able to build Flash applications. I found this book very easy to read and to understand, and the examples easy to put in practice. Sure, there are a few errors here and there (including in the code, which may confound a truly inexperienced programmer, but also make him think a bit to find the errors... a good exercise), but the overall tone is nice. I took my time, going through about one chapter a day (having other things to do as well), so I finished the book in about a month. Someone dedicated can probably read the whole book and play with all the examples in about a week. I especially liked the fact that the book introduces the reader to almost all Flash APIs: graphics, animation, user interface, XML parsing, file management, networking, image processing, printing, JavaScript interaction, etc. It does not go in depth into most APIs, but by the time you're done reading the book, you have a great overall picture of what you can do with Flash, and you can now explore the APIs in depth by yourself to build more complex projects (using the very comprehensive integrated help that comes with Flash CS3 Professional). You know where to look. I took notes while reading the book every time I learned a new concept, and now I use a highlighter to cross individual notes out as I put the concept in practice into my code and memorize it for good. I hope to have crossed out all my notes in the coming weeks. Anyway, one month after having finished the book, I consider myself quite familiar with ActionScript 3, and I have been writing some good code. So I would say that I am very happy that I purchased this book.

This is a fantastic book on AS3. If you are doing any type of major AS3 development then this books is a gem. It goes through the basics of variable declaration to classes and how the AS3 Environment uses them build RIA and flash content. I also bought Essential ActionScript 3.0 (Essential) with this one to make sure that I get two explanations on each element of the language. When comparing both of them, The bible is good in some areas of explanation and the Essentials is vice versa. Overall if you are going to be working with the AS3 language this is a impressive book to have in your arsenal for understanding and implementation of the language.