Rating: 
Summary: AS - a great language
Review: Some other programmers come from C, C++, Java consider ActionScript (AS) like a toy. They must read this few line about OOP with AS and they should change there approach.I know Flash since its version 2 and for the first time i meet a book focus on concept and not just language.
If you need to learn OOP thinking, with examples, no doubt this book is for you. Authors explain how to think OOP in the real world.
Rating:
Summary: The "Other" Must-Have Actionscript book
Review: The best part of Flash MX is the almost absolute control you have over Flash via ActionScript. People can get by without tapping into this rich functionality and still do well with the new non-ActionScript features but most Flash developers want more. Though I'm not a Flash historian, I believe Branden and Sam were critical in the strong hack-together OOP movement at the end of Flash 5's life and genesis of Flash MX's birth. This is the kind of insider perspective that, if you are interested in taking advantage of ActionScript MX-style, will prove very handy in your development. Branden and Sam have written this book with a kind of geek wonder and gee-whiz discovery that speaks to my programmer heart. They do a great job so describing hard-won ActionScript-specific coding practices and techniques along side actual code samples. I have been programming professionally for a while but the looseness of Actionscript is enough to drive me insane (i.e. AS's unwillingness to throw errors on undefined functions or variables combined with my horrible spelling skills). The author's tricks like the _resolve function on page 68 which can catch undefined function calls, as they as called, are a GODSEND! The book covers setting up a good Flash MX development layout, having data-aware components, XML, creating Heap structures, debugging techniques and building components from scratch with an Actionscript bent. It also has two great guest chapter writers: Andreas Hiem (Server Integration) and Nigel Pegg (Components). I'm definitely gushing here but there is no fluff or wasted space here. I think they did a great job of sharing their knowledge and I hope, when they collect enough new material, they will write another book....
Rating:
Summary: Must have!
Review: This book is one to read then re-read and then use a reference.
Within the first 2 chapters I learned something new about MX ActionScripting. It was that quick! Mind you I am not a newbie, I have a keen sense of ActionScripting and programming as it is but learning all the subtle nuances is a challenge. Most books out there do not get into enough of the ActionScript, I have seen plenty of examples of the same thing [bored], this book goes in a better direction, what is the OOP concept specific to Flash.
For several weeks/months I have been talking this book up with a local user group and now I can confidently say I was right, it is worth the time to read this material. The concepts here will help many developers create better, more efficient, Flash MX projects.
This book is one for the list of highly recommended books, right up there with Moock's book.
Rating:
Summary: A useful book moving in the right direction
Review: This is a useful book for pedagogical purposes. The authors write in a lucid style and generally the book is evenly balanced. I am critical of the lack of a CD though the files are downloadable from their site. While the authors talk about OO in Flash and work through examples of restricted OO applications, they also admit that Flash's Actionscript is really not an OO language. Hence while OO thinking in Flash may help some developers organise their code more effectively, the language is not sufficiently enriched (viz. the current programming semantics of Flash) to support the usual range of OO constructs found in Java, C++ or C#. The authors explicitly flag inheritance as, at the least, difficult to achieve in Flash and recommend its avoidance. Hence my comment that Flash is really not ready for OO yet - but as this book shows, it could get there. Programmers especially those from a Computer Science background, will find this book very useful as it gets to terms with programming in Flash (Actionscript) more directly than many others. For instance a reasonable though limited overview of fairly common data structures coded in Actionscript is presented, and that is a very welcome development. The section dealing with components introduces a layer of software engineering thinking that many books appear to avoid (or are ignorant of). However, it also clear that component development in Flash has a way to go yet, and I got a strong sense from the book that the state of Actionscript development is not all it should be. Despite its many fine points and admirable style, there are a few weaknesses. Firstly the whole area of combiming Actionscript with other APIs is largely ignored. When will someone plug this gap? Please email me if someone already has, as I have a number of postgraduates who would benefit. Secondly the section on XML and databases access through Flash Remoting is very potted and should have been spread over several additional chapters. I found this book to be very useful and certainly moving in the right direction from a programmer's perspective. In many ways however, and with no disrespect to the authors, it also struck me as a draft for a much better book that could emerge in few months time. Hopefully the authors will plug that gap sooner rather than later.
Rating:
Summary: Very good
Review: This is very good if you dont get bored in the first 20 pages.
Rating:
Summary: Excellence All Around!
Review: When I got this book delivered to me, I had already seen a few chapters previous to the book going to print. I already knew how important and how well-written this book was going to be. Being able to read through the whole thing, all I can say is this book is a MUST HAVE. This book is on par with Collin Moock's now famous book. In fact in some ways, this book is actually better! Flash MX has brought a lot more capabilities to the table - but implementing them isn't always very easy. This book explains OOP in a way everyone can understand, then presents real-world situations where you'd benefit from this development approach. Components are covered in depth, and even Nigel Pegg from Macromedia chimes in with some of his own chapters. The book covers OOP principles, how to conduct OOP in Flash, covers component creation, working with components that already exist, implementing live previews with components, debugging guidance, using ASFunction with text fields, passing variables to from, data structures, and they even close the book out with some useful bits of AS code you might be able to reference for your own projects. This is an amazing resource, artfully and precisely written, by some of the most talented coders on the planet. I highly reccommend this title.
Rating: 
Summary: Where's The Beef? (or, more correctly, "Where's The OOP?")
Review: Why does a book entitled "Object-Oriented Programming with ActionScript" only include 3 chapters (plus one "real-world" example chapter) on OOP? With 16 chapters and 400 pages, this is all the OOP we get? I guess the New Riders marketing folks decided the Flash book market needed a book with OOP in its title (whether they had enough OOP material to fill a book or not). To make matters worse, the OOP chapters in this book assume you are already intimately familier with OOP and just need an overview of how it works (or doesn't work) in AS. This is certainly not a book for Actionscripters who want to learn OOP! The authors are clearly experts in their field but alas, an expert does not always a writer make! I often found Mr. Hall's writing to be obtuse and overly verbose. Some of his "explanations" had me more confused than when I started! Now with that all said you may think I hated the book but actually I found quite a few useful nuggets... - chapter 1 has some very good advice on optimizing your setup of the Flash environment
- chapters 6-10 provide useful information on components -- both their useage and creation
- chapter 11 provides some nice debugging tips
- the remaining chapters provide a variety of useful techniques for the AS programmer Bottom line, I bought a used copy of the book and felt it was worth the price; had I paid a higher price I would not have been happy with it.
Rating:
Summary: Where's The Beef? (or, more correctly, "Where's The OOP?")
Review: Why does a book entitled "Object-Oriented Programming with ActionScript" only include 3 chapters (plus one "real-world" example chapter) on OOP? With 16 chapters and 400 pages, this is all the OOP we get? I guess the New Riders marketing folks decided the Flash book market needed a book with OOP in its title (whether they had enough OOP material to fill a book or not). To make matters worse, the OOP chapters in this book assume you are already intimately familier with OOP and just need an overview of how it works (or doesn't work) in AS. This is certainly not a book for Actionscripters who want to learn OOP! The authors are clearly experts in their field but alas, an expert does not always a writer make! I often found Mr. Hall's writing to be obtuse and overly verbose. Some of his "explanations" had me more confused than when I started! Now with that all said you may think I hated the book but actually I found quite a few useful nuggets... - chapter 1 has some very good advice on optimizing your setup of the Flash environment
- chapters 6-10 provide useful information on components -- both their useage and creation
- chapter 11 provides some nice debugging tips
- the remaining chapters provide a variety of useful techniques for the AS programmer Bottom line, I bought a used copy of the book and felt it was worth the price; had I paid a higher price I would not have been happy with it.
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