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Foundation ActionScript for Flash 8 Review by Joshua J. Larson
A Great ActionScript Book By Designers For Designers
This is a great book for the designer interested in getting deeper into Flash through ActionScript 2.0. Primarily centered around web-based projects, with the occasional game project, Sham et al. lead the reader through basic programming fundamentals from a designer perspective. The reader is assumed to be mildly frightened by looking at code, but still interested in learing it. I can sympathize that many designers could be in this boat.
The language of the book is very non-technical and it's presented in a light-hearted manner to ease you into some difficult concepts. The authors do a great job of tricking you into getting excited about programming. So if you're a web designer who has always been impressed by what programmers can do, but were a little uncomfortable trying to just jump in on your own, this is THE book for you.
I have two warnings and one critique.
The first warning is that this is a Flash 8 book - hence ActionScript 2.0. The second warning is that almost all the projects in the book are web-based instead of game-based. Now it's Flash, so it kind of comes with the territory, and there is a full chapter devoted to making a game. However, the perfect book for me would be this exact same book, but centered almost completely around game-based projects. If you're strictly looking for that, this book isn't for you. I don't care as much, and there's still a lot to learn, so I don't regret purchasing the book.
My critique is regarding the book-long project where you make a website that uses ActionScript (the Futuremedia site). It's a case study where you can apply some of what you've learned to a "real" project. My problem with it is that you don't seem to learn a whole lot about ActionScripting by going through it. The authors (or whichever individual wrote the project) seem to be really proud of this project - proud in the sense that they like themselves for it - and you can tell by going throug it. Plus, its more content-oriented. There's much more to learn from everything else, so I'm just skipping the project and skimming over it whenever it's time to work on it a little (which isn't a whole lot anyway).
Overall, it's a great book so far (I'm about 1/3 done) and I'd recommend it to anyone who's new to programming and wants to learn it through ActionScript 2.0. Sham has an awesome ability to explain programming to a designer.