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Rating: 
Summary: Good reference
Review: A needed book that offers valuable information. It's unfortunate that there are so many typos but its really the only book I have found that treats ActionScript like a real programming language and seems to make a conscious effort to avoid most of the visual aspects of Flash that had really confused me before. I need to learn ActionScript 2 and don't need to worry about building animations or the like. It's been very useful as a reference. Overall, a great book and really there is nothing else like it out there. Be forewarned that there are heaps of typos, and some code snippets don't work.
Rating: 
Summary: Note from the Author
Review: A number of issues were introduced to this book after the code left the authors hands. A correct version of all the source code can be found online at http://www.oopas2.com.
Thanks for reading our book.
Jeff Tapper
Rating:
Summary: Good reference
Review: First, let me say that I think the technical editing on this book is an atrocity! It seems as though the Courier-fonted code presented in this book was cut-and-pasted from a mish-mash of sources. The formatting and even coding style differs from one listing to the next, even within essentially the same programs! I think that's terrible. It's rather difficult to learn the material when your examples are awful and full of mistakes. For shame! Secondly, the book is really expensive, and a lot of the space is wasted on server technologies that many people cannot possibly afford. The typeface could be a little smaller, especially on the code, and more good stuff could be fit into the book. Thirdly, the website listed on the book is WRONG! So I cannot download ANY of the code examples. Nor has New Riders / Peachpit bothered to mention this on their site. They list only TWO mistakes in their "errata," which is so wrong it's not even funny. I wish that authors, and editors in particular, would put more effort into proofing a book before sending it to press. In my opinion, writing a book is not like putting out a piece of software. It's much harder to offer "patches", especially with an unwilling publisher and uncaring authors. However, the material in this book is, for the most part, very good. I appreciate its timeliness very much, but I think a lot more effort should have gone into the later stages of production!
Rating:
Summary: Experienced web dev - new to AS 2.0
Review: Having minimum Flash/AS1 experience, but years of web dev (javascript/css/etc) experience I found this book to be an excellent launching pad. The first three chapters summerized the new syntax very nicely. Its not a language reference, but still very useful and inspiring. Even gets into OO design priciples and an example OO project.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of errors but good learning tool
Review: I got this book to learn more about OOP style programming and for the most part that what it does. If you really want to have a good primer for actionscript oop programming this is the book. The down side to the book is all the errors and the section with the XML does not give all the code you need for the drop-down menus (unless you download the fla). If you are not great at debugging the author's code, be prepare to be frustrated and disappointed. I can't give this book a high rating because of all the errors but for reference alone and coverage on basic OOP structure I have to give it 5 stars. Anything after chapter 5 its slim picking for good and valuable code. Maybe Jeff Tapper should have waited to write the book after Collin Moock put out his so he can see how to write good code. With that aside the book is uh....ok.
Rating:
Summary: How about spell check?
Review: i was leery about buying this book from the seemingly negative user reviews it received, but i went ahead and did it anyway. i was surprised at the number of blatant spelling errors and the multitude of examples that did not work. i did get a lot of practice debugging actionscript, though. if you don't want to spend time fixing author errors and reading confusing, misspelled text, then don't bother buying this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A lot of info...too high a price
Review: Long wordy explainations, limited examples and just plain not enough useful information. After reading my copy of the Actionscript for Flash MX book by Kerman, I expected wonderful things of this book. Knowing that Actionscript was totally rewritten and was going to have a learning curve, I expected a book similar to Kerman's in the fashion of starting simple and working up to advanced. Instead, the book was littered with verbose explanations and poor examples. At just under 500 pages (the online page count is wrong), this book simply gives an overview of the language. It does do a decent job of focussing on Object Orientation and the techniques involved, but given the limited number of books available on the language of Actionscript 2.0, I just expected more. If you are new to Actionscript 2.0 and have a limited background with programming, this is not the book for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Error Errors Errors
Review: This book has the MOST amount of technical and coding errors I've seen in an ActionScript book in a long time (not the worst--ISBN: 0072222662). I've tech-edited two other Flash books and I'm thinking the tech-editors of this book should learn ActionScript before they attempt to tech-edit their next book. Or at least read it before sending it off. They just had to come out with this book before Colin Moock came out with his or else no one would buy it. The Author, Jeff Tapper, is sick of getting emails about how bad this book is and he said it was a fiasco from start to finish so I'm thinking some marketing jerkwad rushed the book out the door.
More bad desicions in the marketing department end up wasting some more time and trees. Save your money.
Rating:
Summary: Buy this Book!
Review: This is the only actionscript 2.0 book currently on the market that will teach you the best practives of biulding an object oriented data integrated business application with actionscript 2.0. Thank god it was not another one of those "using flash to rotate a bouncing ball across the screen" books. You see the all important up front process modeling and then the actionscript code for building a data integrated flash application. This is also not a "fluffy" 10 pound bible book that just regurgitates the Macromedia livedocs. You learn by seeing an application built with object oriented class methodology, and many commparisons showing alternatives built with the visual data components. The author will enlighten you that actioscript is the best way to build a flexible data integrated business application, as opposed to just using the "quick and dirty" visual data components. It is immediate that the author is a real software architect, and this book demonstrates best practices of building a business application. This book is worth triple its price. Buy this book!
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