Object-Oriented ActionScript for Flash 8 at Dominant Systems Book Store

With the release of Macromedia Flash 8, Flash is now the most powerful and widely used client software for the web, and it’s the only one that runs on virtually every browser, on every platform. It also features ActionScript, a scripting language with great object-oriented support. As such, Flash is the ideal platform for producing sophisticated object-oriented web applications. Complex applications demand a solid understanding of object-oriented programming (OOP) techniques, regardless of the language and platform used, and this book will provide all you need.

Object-Oriented ActionScript For Flash 8 teaches the theory and practice of OOP with ActionScript. You do not need any extensive prior programming experience, you just need to want to go beyond the usual Flash interfaces. Authors, and working Flash developers, Peter Elst and Todd Yard take you through the complete development cycle of a series of related applications, using numerous step-by-step instructions. You’ll be able to develop highly reusable applications and services that leverage the dynamic features in Flash.

This book demonstrates professional OOP skills and techniques that are completely transferable to other programming languages and technologies, including Inheritance, Polymorphism, managing classes, component development, consuming web services, and much more. It also includes some cutting edge ActionScript programming techniques, and animation and effects classes.

Customer Reviews & Comments
I finally decided to take the plunge into OOP after I realized that is where Flash is headed. With the advent of ActionScript 3.0 around the corner (or out now if you're already dabbling in it), you just know that everything is soon going to be class based. This book is a great start to your journey, as someone who originally started to read Colin Moock's Essential ActionScript 2.0 will tell you. It is a LOT easier to read than EA2.0 as I'm not well versed on theory nor do I, at least at this point, really care that much about it. I'm one of those people who want to dive in and learn the syntax/usage, and then I'd like to figure out where it all stems from, not the other way around as it just makes it harder for me to learn that way. The beginning chapters are great and teach you very much about the basics of OOP. If you're an experienced programmer, you honestly probably won't get much out of this book as this would all be stuff you already know. If you're a beginner, however, this is perfect for you. As a pro (and a con on some level) of this book, some of the pages explain how to set up the document before you work on it. This is good for people who are new to Flash, but in my eyes if you're new to Flash you shouldn't be reading an OOP book to start you into programming as this won't help you really learn the syntax. If you're using this book, it should be assumed you already know the basic Flash syntax and won't need to be told how to set the document size (pages 84-92 are basically wasted on setting up a document for coding one of the examples). There is a chapter on design patterns that is really good and explains their functionality pretty well. One thing to note in this chapter is that it comes kind of early in the book and sometimes (at least for me) it was hard to grasp the whole concept of what the Model View Controller, for instance, was doing because I'm still not thinking in terms of OOP, rather procedural, so I had to go back and re-read some of the design pattern stuff a couple of times to fully understand it (and I'm not sure that I do still to this point, but that's outside of the scope of this book). The one knock I have on the book, which really is a non-issue to be honest, but it's a bit funny to see all the editorial errors through these technical books. It makes you wonder if the editors really read the whole thing or just skim it. I feel this book definitely gets me ready to move on to greener pastures, a la Essential ActionScript 2.0, which I should now be ready to dive into. I don't feel like I'm an OOP expert after reading this, but I don't think that was the main point of the book. Of course, I learn a lot slower than others because I have a design background and no programming background whatsoever, but the book was painless to read and I enjoyed it greatly. Don't get me wrong if this review is sounding half negative, the book is essential to anyone getting started with OOP (as I am), and I highly recommend it. I just tend to point out everything I notice and sometimes I don't always write down all the positives so my reviews seem to lean towards the negative a bit more. In no way does this mean this book is bad, because it really isn't; it's a great book.

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