Rating: 
Summary: A valuable toolbox for advanced ActionScripters
Review: I've been coding hardcore ActionScript for a couple years now, and doing OOP in Java and other languages for much longer than that. I still learned a LOT from this book. The authors spell out many things that you otherwise have to learn on your own, through exhaustive trial and error. This book, along with Colin Moock's, is among the few that truly delve into Advanced Topics. (Some other books call themselves Advanced but often just briefly describe the Advanced features without giving real-life examples). The authors do a great job explaining the application of OOP techniqes in ActionScript. A warning to novices though: you'll get a lot more out of this book if you already have some knowledge of OOP! They cover many other topics in depth, with actual code samples, including: * Design Patterns for Flash, including a Model-View-Presenter sample
* Events, Callbacks and Listeners, and how to define your own Custom Events
* Data-Aware Components using the DataProviderClass
* Anti-Distortion in FUI-style Components
* Building your own Components, including Live Preview
* "Textfield Mangling" and HTML text fields
* Remote Debugging
* Flash Remoting There's a lot more too. It's hard to get accurate information about any of these topics anywhere else--even on the Macromedia website--so a book that collects them all in one place is a godsend. The writing style is lively and to-the-point, and the book design is clean, readable, and attractive. I highly recommend this book for all advanced ActionScript programmers who want to refine their craft.
Rating: 
Summary: Geared towards the advanced programmer
Review: I've programmed actionscript the standard way with variables and directly manipulating properties for at least a year now. I found this book a tough read, at least for me. I really wanted to grasp the material but found it lacking in code examples in the beginning sections where important concepts and theory are discussed. OOP is definitely the way to go but I'll have to find another resource. It's more suited for the pure programmer and definitely not a designer.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic book for OOP concepts in ActionScript.
Review: I've worked with Flash for many years. I've also been programming in Pascal, C, C++ for many years. This book helped me for the first time tie the OOP concept to Flash movie clips, frames, sound objects, and timelines. I didn't need a book with pages of code examples. I just needed to have a good explaination and short examples of how the components work or how to manipulate the XML object. In a way, this book serves as a refresh course for people who are familiar with tools such as Visual Basic and have always thought Flash is just for animations. This book is for Flash 6, the concept is still the same with Flash 7 and ActionScript 2.0
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic book for OOP concepts in ActionScript.
Review: I've worked with Flash for many years. I've also been programming in Pascal, C, C++ for many years. This book helped me for the first time tie the OOP concept to Flash movie clips, frames, sound objects, and timelines. I didn't need a book with pages of code examples. I just needed to have a good explaination and short examples of how the components work or how to manipulate the XML object. In a way, this book serves as a refresh course for people who are familiar with tools such as Visual Basic and have always thought Flash is just for animations. This book is for Flash 6, the concept is still the same with Flash 7 and ActionScript 2.0
Rating:
Summary: a fine advanced book for experienced flash programmers
Review: If you are a typical Flash developer, you first encountered Flash as a design environment, and then you began learning Actionscript, the scripting language for Flash. You can find a lot of books teaching Actionscript on the shelves, but most do not go very deep. What is given to you, usually, is a how-to-code course for a language which is very similar to Javascript, and how to use it in the Flash environment. However, Actionscript can be a much more sophisticated beast in the rights hands, especially in its last "MX" incarnation. And here comes "Object-Oriented Programming with ActionScript". This fine book is divided in three parts. The first is about Object-Oriented Programming in ActionScript: after a crash course in OOP, the ActionScript implementation of OOP is presented (and if you already had contact with OOP in your life, with Java for example, you could be surprised about some interesting features). A full example of game design with OOP Actionscript is then shown. The second part of the book is about Components, which is a new feature of Flash MX, and which is very important if you don't want to reinvent the wheel every time you have to program something. The final part of the book contains a collection of mixed and useful topics: debugging techniques, server integration, text fields wizardry, data structures, and more. Warning: this is a book for experienced programmers. You are supposed to know ActionScript pretty well in order to understand it (if you don't, New Riders also has some nice entry-level books about ActionScript). But if your ActionScript experience is good, you can't miss this one. The information provided here is available nowhere else. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Is this book for you?
Review: Let's face it, your reading this review to figure out if this book is right for you. The following is my opinion on who the book would be best suited for. Object-Oriented Programming with actionscript is for you if: -You find yourself needing more content about actionscript after reading Colin Moock's book on actionscript.
-You knew what OOP meant, with out having to ask a programmer.
-You have found that in the past reading about actionscript and OOP has seemed vague and hollow. -You're interested in understanding new actionscript methods and properties available in flash MX to manipulate textfields, movieclips, and buttons
-Scripting a component is better than playing Quake. (5 chapters devoted to components)
-Your just one strait-up actionscript guru, or close to it.
-You find yourself correcting other people's grammar on the flashcoders e-mail listings because you spend so much fricking time there.
-Your interested in understanding how Branden Hall debugs code. (If you care to know, he's the one to listen too)
-You're going to name you first child after Sam because you're favorite flash immortal is Samuel Wan. Well theirs that and the fact that his presentation on OOP at flashforward was pretty sweet and has spark your curiosity in OOP.
-You want to get in the big leagues of programming, and impress the java programmer at work with your understanding of OOP. This book is deep, not like a love poem, like a hole, a deep hole of knowledge from two experts (and a group of amazing technical editors) about flash MX. OOP is just the tip of the ice berg, check out the table of contents and you'll see. Be warned however that you might find yourself slipping and traveling down the hole of knowledge a bit to fast, just kick those feet out and climb back up, re-group then give it another go, I know I did. Especially with the OOP example, which is actually one of the first examples I have seen using real OOP principles.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: Not only the best advanced Flash MX book, but an exceptional programming book in general. Most authors of programming texts are terrible writers, but Hall and Wan actually have a voice and personality that lifts them above average. Complex topics are presented clearly and with wit. This book covers topics that even more recent Flash MX books don't: patterns (hello other Flash writers, this is important!), components for programmers, and data structures and how to use them. Most of all Wan and Hall are real Flash experts, not writers who go from technology to technology, leaving generic books in their wake. These guys know how the program works and how to work with it. There's no idealized discussion of OOP that ignores how Flash actually works (as in the William Drol book), and there's no whining about Flash's unusual methods of inheirtance (for example). And their projects and examples seem real, no discussion of OOP that starts with "a Circle and Triangle are both types of Shape..."
Rating:
Summary: Lucid, Challenging and Rewarding
Review: Of the many books on "good ActionScript programming" that I've read, this one is the best. Written in a friendly, clear style, Branden and Sam walk both intermediate and experienced ActionScript programmers through the realities and benefits of OO programming in ActionScript. Branden's material is a great introduction to the MVC architecture, and to design patterns in general (in fact, the book inspired me to finally go out and learn about (and use) software design patterns). Sam's material is thorough in its coverage of components -- much more so than the tutorials and articles you'll find scattered across the Net. If you've moved beyond the basics of ActionScript, and really want to build solid, robust Flash MX applications, this book is a must-read.
Rating:
Summary: ***** You're not an AScripter if you don't read this book !
Review: Powerful and well-written even if graphic formalism is home-made and ambiguous (a UML-based approach would have been great)
Forget all others AS books; this one is the only must-have reference to build clean code.BRAVO !!
Rating: 
Summary: nothing but fluff
Review: Save your money, this book is nothing but fluff. So many typos I stopped counting. Their best advice about many actionscript topics was to consult the Macromedia web site. This is really sad.
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