Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Good but not enough
Comment: If you are coming from AS 2.0 timeline scripting, maybe you should start from the end and read first the Chapter 29. The book needed to be wide enough to fit Flash, Flex and mxmlc so you might feel that the author is not speaking directly to you sometimes. It can make things harder to understand.
The book has many pages, but it is far from being definitive. There are a lot of topics that it doesn't cover. On the other hand, topics covered are very well explained and much can be learned from this book.
I just finished reading it and from now on it will be used as a guide together with the ActionScript Language Reference.
Also, I'll start reading another book which I hope may complement this one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Well beyond the essentials
Comment: I've been getting deeper into "Essential ActionScript 3.0" and I'm amazed at the thoroughness of this book. I was first introduced to Colin's writing with "ActionScript for Flash MX, the Definitive Guide". I'd just came from two years of teaching Java for Sun Microsystems and loved the way he handled explanations in the book, often he'd even compare AS to Java and go deep in the details. With AS3, we finally have language rivaling Java, and (IMO) a better set of APIs.
The amount of information is stunning, it boggles the mind. Colin covers AS3 in more detail, with better explanations, and a better grasp of the subject than the Adobe documentation. If you are programming in AS3, this book is must. I don't think you could get the most out of AS3 programming without it, or maybe you could but it would take quite a bit longer!
A side-effect of this book is the shear size of it gives you an idea of the depth of the subject matter. AS3 is an object-oriented programming language and framework, not just a scripting language.
I just have two minor criticisms (which by no means affects my recommendation of this book). The first is that he covers a ton of material in the beginning but does not have the reader compile until chapter 7 (page 130). AS3 is so much fun in how easy it makes graphics programming, that I feel he could teach the first six chapters more effectively if he had the user compiling and running examples along the way (even simple examples). My second is one that is probably just my own pet peeve... at the end of each chapter he has a paragraph about the next chapter, it's distracting to me, I'd rather read about the stuff in the next chapter in the next chapter.
This is a well-organized, clearly written book, with great examples throughout. If you are coming to AS3, this book should be within arms reach if not already sitting open on your desk.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great primer!
Comment: Coming from a java and javascript programming background I found this book very informative and easy to learn. This book is a must-have if you are new to AS3 and also if you want to learn FLEX 2. I highly recommend this book for beginners who wants to learn AS3 programming language.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not for the young at heart
Comment: Great reference. But if you are still learning, get another text with this one to guide you along.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Anyone Seeking Clarity, Completeness, and AS3 Enlightenment Beware...
Comment: After jumping on the bandwagon after reading the first few chapters of this book and feeling flushed with geeky euphoria, I now have to re-rate this book as "DO NOT BUY."
It's difficult, unconscionable to give a positive reviews to this book. Neither seasoned nor beginning coders will gain from struggling through this very poorly written, rushed book. EAS3 is nowhere near as good as its predecessor; it is very poorly written, poorly structured, incomplete, and appears to have several if not many technical mistakes (I found several undocumented code errors) that will have coders up all night wondering "what's wrong"?
To start, some of the sophistry of Essential AS 2.0 emerges with remorseless abandon in this book which is choked full of excessive erudition that serves nobody. Take this passage:
"object.instanceVariable = value
In the preceding code, object[italics] is the object whose instance variable will be assigned a value, instanceVariable[italics] is one of object's instance variables (as defined by object's class), and value[italics] is the value to assign."
The book italicizes the words noted in italics above but this notation does little to detangle the tautologies that explain nothing and confuse everything. Only seasoned coders versed in coding terminology such as "object" will begin to understand the sentence and then only vaguely. Obviously, the first directive to coders, KISS, was lost on this book. After all, couldn't Moock have written that explanation with more clarity? Passage like the above are replete throughout the book.
Here is another statement that a good publisher would have demanded rewriting:
Via the scope chain, code in an instance method's scope can access these definitions:
*
All definitions available to code in the global scope
*
All definitions available to code in the scope of the class containing the instance method definition
Isn't the second point circular? It's basically saying that instance methods can access code that is accessible by instance methods. This writing is AWFUL. Sorry to see this series which was the ActionScript franchise deteriorate into such a cesspool of unnecessary and foul erudition. That passage, like so many others in the book, reads more like the tax code than an clear exposition of AS3.
Secondly, how can anyone claim this book is a thorough treatment of AS3? There is scant if any discussion on SOUND or VIDEO. In fact, this book starts with a discussion of OOP like EAS2 then strangely turns into more a recipe, by the numbers how-to use AS3's library. Not that this strange turn is all bad (it is bad in many areas) but there are better books, which are better recipe books than this one.
Thirdly, this book doesn't even cover the same ground as EAS2 which was a good primer into OOP for AS and at the time of its publication, the only worthwhile high-level treatment of AS. This book, as stated earlier, is more focused on the micro level. It was a major disappointment to see this book abruptly ends its discussion of OOP and turn to by-the-numbers coding.
Lastly (there is more but I cannot lament anymore about this bad book) this book is poorly structured. Too many times in the book, Moock introduces an idea that is not discussed until much later in the book. This is just poor structuring and planning. A better book would have built instructions in increments and exercised caution to avoid the yo-yo structure of this book.
This book has approached cult status among the AS community and there is some basis for the vast anticipation of this book given EAS2. However, the laudatory reviews on Amazon are vastly overrated. This is a poorly written, poorly structured, and at times mysteriously erroneous book.
I can't change the star rating given before this update but a warning to everyone: when a book is more difficult to understand than the underlying substance it purports to explains, BEWARE. 0, Zero stars are merited because this is truly a book that is one or more drafts away from publication. The book is rushed and appears to be an attempt to cash in on the franchise.
I withdraw my recommendation and recommend instead for everyone to read Essential AS2 first, then update by skimming through this book or wait for something more reader friendly. There is no satisfaction in slogging through this book (because what you could learn from it is miniscule compared to the difficulty Moock presents) which is among the worse published by O'Reilly.
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