Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Required Reading For ActionScript Developers
Comment: Essential ActionScript 3.0 by Colin Moock is absolutely required reading for all ActionScript developers out there in the cyberworld. With over 900 pages and 31 chapters, content is laid out in a logical, clear manner. From the basics of data structures, classes and conditional loops to more advanced topics like event processing and interfaces, this guide is must reading. For every programming language out there, there is some book that becomes THE reference material for said language and this is that book. With hundreds of more pages than the previous edition and coverage of Flex 2 development, this book top to bottom is fantastic!!
Chapter Listing
Part I. ActionScript Basics
1. Core Concepts
2. Conditionals and Loops
3. Instance Methods Revisited
4. Static Variables and Static Methods
5. Functions
6. Inheritance
7. Compiling and Running a Program
8. Datatypes and Type Checking
9. Interfaces
10. Statements and Operators
11. Arrays
12. Events and Event Handling
13. Exceptions and Error Handling
14. Garbage Collection
15. Dynamic ActionScript
16. Scope
17. Namespaces
18. XML and E4X
19. Flash Player Security Restrictions
Part II. Display And Interactivity
20. The Display API and the Display List
21. Events and Display Hierarchies
22. Interactivity
23. Screen Updates
24. Programmatic Animation
25. Drawing with Vectors
26. Bitmap Programming
27. Text Display and Input
28. Loading External Display Assets
Part III. Aapplied Actionscript Topics
29. ActionScript and the Flash Authoring Tool
30. A Minimal MXML Application
31. Distributing a Class Library
***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Colin Moock Book
Comment: This morning at my doorstep was the long awaited Amazon Box containing my copy of O'Reilly Essential Actionscript 3.0 by Colin Moock the longtime waited follow up to what is known in the Flash programing world as The Colin Moock Book, and I'm happy to say it was worth the waiting.
The book it's equally appealing to first time actionscript users and long time actionscript veterans, Mr. Moock has such a way to make translations from a computer based language to a much more accessible and easy to understand form.
ActionScript 3.0 presents perhaps the most substantial upgrade to Flash's programming language ever. The enhancements to ActionScript's performance, feature set, ease of use, cleanliness, and sophistication are simply staggering. Revolutionary improvements abound. Essential ActionScript 3.0 is an update to Essential ActionScript 2.0, once again focusing on the core language and object-oriented programming with some coverage of the Flash Player API. Approximately half of the book focuses on the new features and functionality of ActionScript 3.0, while the rest focuses on changes between the 2 and 3 releases.
The Book is divided in three parts,
Part 1 Actionscript form the ground up.
Where he provides and exhaustive coverage of the core Actionscript language.
Part 2 Display and Interactivity.
Where he explores the techniques for displaying content on screen and responding to input events. ( This is for all of you interactivity lovers ).
Part 3 Applied Actionscript Topics.
In this part the book focuses on Actionscript code-production issues .
To be sincere if you are really a Flash Beginner or a seasoned user of the Flash Technology this book should really be at your desk as a trusty companion in those long coding nights. the book can be found at Amazon or at O'Reilly and don't forget to visit Mr.Moock site.
Cheers and happy reading!!!.
.swfgeek
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great book but...no practical class examples
Comment: This is an excellent book and a handy reference, but don't be fooled by the "no prior programming experience needed" line. This book *is* a highly detailed and overly fussy examination of the inner workings of Actionscript 3. What's missing are fundamental concepts: how to actually plan, build and deploy classes to build a real-world application. The book contains absolutely zero in the way of practical examples.
The virtual zoo class that is the central example used throughout the book is inane and bears little resemblance to anything one would actually code when creating a website. Consequently, beginners will be left scratching their heads and wondering where to start with their own projects. Luckily there are websites that are starting to appear with simple, practical AS3 examples to help beginners understand how to actually use AS3 in a project. Those examples, in combination with this book, should get you rolling. Just don't expect this book to do it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Another great book from Colin Moock
Comment: Essential AS 3.0 is the Bible of AS 3.0 reference. Very clear examples of everything ActionScript. Each example is well defined, and the code is very clear and concise. This book is not for the novice, but more of a reference for someone who has some programming knowledge, but wants to learn ActionScript 3.0.
The book has great example files online and it is another expert writing by Colin Moock. His explanations of the code are clear, and his knowledge of AS 3.0 seems to be endless. With the major overhaul of ActionScript from 2.0 to 3.0, Colin does a great job of relating the old to the new. I especially enjoyed the section on XML and the new XML Class and XMLList Class and the new filtering with E4X. ActionScript has came a far way from 2 to 3 in the handling of XML.
One other thing that Mr. Moock brings to light is the sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle references to design patterns and what to look for in your programming to make it more concise, flexible and reusable. He has made me look at writing programming in a different way, and opened my eyes to smarter programming.
I recommend this book for intermediate to expert level ActionScript programmers.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One True Source for ActionScript 3.0
Comment: I'm a software engineer but a relative newcomer to programming with Flex 2 and ActionScript 3. I have been waiting for the definitive book on Actionscript 3 programming, as a companion to my copy of Programming Flex 2. Until now, I have made due with the online documentation and web searches for what I needed to know, but Essential ActionScript 3.0 has arrived and fits the bill nicely.
The author, Colin Mook, knows a thing or two about ActionScript programming and has obviously followed the evolution of the language from version 2 to version 3. The book has been reviewed by many engineers and architects at Adobe to ensure that, at the time of printing, the information presented is correct and up-to-date. It is also nice to know that the book is backed up by Oreilly's Safari service for staying current, even though I tend to go to the online documentation to get my updates.
So how does the book stack up? At over 900 pages, it definitely passes the lift test. The book is divided into three main sections; ActionScript from the ground up, Display and Interactivity, and Applied ActionScript Topics. I spent a pretty good amount of time reading through the first section both to get a good sense of Colins' writing style and because it was a very enjoyable read. The book does not assume that the reader has any prior programming experience, although any prior experience with object-oriented programming would be beneficial. The author starts out gently by explaining what objects are and how they are used in ActionScript. From there he guides the reader through the intricacies of object-oriented programming in ActionScript 3. Each chapter is devoted to a single topic and there is a running example of building a Virtual Zoo to help explain and illustrate the principles of each chapter.
When you get to part two (which is roughly a third of the book), you have a good understanding of ActionScript and, if you've been doing the examples, have some experience writing and running some fairly involved programs. The chapters of the second part then go into all the gory details of graphical programming with ActionScript. For many, this is where things get exciting as the author runs the reader through how to set up the Stage, create graphical objects, draw lines and blit bitmaps. Compared with the first part of the book, this section definitely has more "information density" and contains code samples that you will probably come back to a couple of times before you fully understand what is happening.
Part three of the book is a scant hundred pages long, and, to be honest, probably the least interesting part of the book. The chapter on ActionScript with Flash authoring is really only relevant if you are using the Flash Authoring tool. There is a token chapter showing a minimalistic MXML (Flex) program. There is also a chapter on distribution of your Class Libraries, which is probably the most useful chapter in this part of the book.
No book is perfect, and this book is no exception to that rule. There were a few small stylistic things that bothered me as I was reading. In the first part of the book, there are a few instances where the author forward references some keyword or concept to illustrate the current point. If you aren't already familiar with that keyword, you have to jump to a later chapter to brush up before continuing. To the authors' credit, he does tell you that when a topic hasn't been covered yet and tells you which chapter to jump forward to if you want to know more about it before proceeding. Personally, this wasn't a huge distraction because most topics were easy to figure out just from the context of the examples, but a reader without much programming experience might find himself jumping around a bit.
The part three chapters felt like they were just bolted on and didn't really add very much to the book. Admittedly they might be of some value if you happen to be using the Flash Authoring tool or need some help with deployment of your libraries. I am mildly disappointed that there wasn't a bigger chapter on Flex and MXML, but it is understandable given that Flex and MXML programming really are outside the realm of ActionScript programming.
I also found it sad that the quirky virtual zoo example was largely ignored during part two of the book. If anything, the virtual zoo would have made a great test bed for graphical programming topics. Fortunately there is an appendix that contains a complete code listing for the virtual zoo, including graphical elements, and the source code is downloadable from the author's website.
I would definitely recommend this book if you are new to ActionScript programming and want "one true source" to get you started. In addition to being a gentle introduction to object-oriented programming, it nicely points out the ActionScript idioms and terminology. Although nothing will beat the online documentation for timeliness and correctness, Essential ActionScript 3 is a good place to start.
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