Rating: 
Summary: Execellent Tutorial Book!
Review: This book asn't for people who just started out ActionScripting but for intermediate and advanced actionscripter. The book teaches you technique that would be very useful when writing your own script.
Rating: 
Summary: waste of time for the beginner
Review: This book is simply a waste of time to try a pick your way through. It is poorly organized and the instructions are full of holes and assumptions. There are far more comprehensive and understandable techniques available on were-here.com and flashkit.com all at the low price of *free*. The authors definetely give some great examples of what can be done in Flash and it's a good resource to copy code, but I wouldn't purchase this book with the intention of learning anything. You will need a strong foundation in understanding advanced actionscript concepts to fill in the gaps left by the authors. My suggestion: Check out the O'Reilly book by Colin Moock first.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, advanced content at last
Review: This book is, along with Moock's Actionscript book for O'Reilly, the first really solid book covering programming in Flash 5. That includes good stuff on planning projects, code structuring, OOP, design, and XML much more in depth than any other Flash book I've seen. It is definately advanced, perhaps not to the point of some of the hardcore OOP coders on the Flash lists, but quite complex and more than enough to challenge most readers, which is good. The projects are good and varied, and it seems like Friends of Ed has at last gotten someone to insure that coding styles are reasonably consistant throughout the book--other of their Flash books have been essentially collections of inconsistant and often incompatible articles. The usual suspects do show up (spaceship games and rotating 3D cubes), but presented with a level of detail and thoroughness totally absent in other books (short tutorial in matrix math anyone?) The great chapters on Sound and XML are almost worth the price alone, but the standout chapter is called "Creativity in Practice" and covers invaluable stuff like: working in teams, interaction planning, prototyping, information architecture, even some usability. In other words, the stuff that professional designers do the 80% of the time they're not messing around with software. It's exciting to see these topics appear in what could have been just another coding book. I won't dock it a star, but one qualm is that it doesn't come with a CD (again contrary to Kevin's review below). You have to download about 80Megs of files from the publishers site. Come on guys, if there's no CD at least knock a few bucks off the price. And even at high-speeds, that 80Meg download is kind of a pain.
Rating:
Summary: The book does NOT tell you how/what to write CORRECTLY
Review: This is by far the WORST book I have ever seen on ActionScript. I am currently on Chapter 3 right now, and I want to tell you guys what this book put me through. Bear in mind, that I am only on chapter 3, and that I will update this review IF it gets better afterwards. First I went through Chapter 1, which is a short introduction to changes from Flash 4 to Flash 5, and some minor rules that you need to read. Alright, great detailed book so far. Onward. Chapter 2 deals with animation in Flash 5, giving us a very quick and short rundown on many of the actionscript properties. The description was good, and the explanation was clear, BUT, you HAVE to understand this BEFOREHAND to be able to follow the instructions to the fullest. What I mean is, say that they explain to you what 10 different things do. Well, in their code, they're going to use those 10 different things they just taught you. You may think "well duh, that's what they're teaching you." Well guess what folks, they go through those 10 different things, and they use it to the fullest. What I mean is, they will use those 10 things at the most advanced level you can imagine that you WILL be lost if you're trying to LEARN this. Lucky for me, I had basic animations down, so this was a breeze for me. I was worried, but ready to move on. Chapter 3 comes. THIS is where it starts to really get to me and where the book completely and miserably utterly fails. In this chapter we are taught to create a menu. This menu is completely scripted, able to collapse with sub-menus and all. I was extremely excited to 'learn' how to do this. So I start reading. They teach you, in this chapter: functions, arrays, all the loops, and also smart clips. Once again, they use ALL of those things they teach to it's fullest extent. And again you may think "man, this guy is stupid, he needs to understand that the book is telling him to take it slow and learn it one bit at a time." Okay, so you may be right. So I take the time to go through Flashkit.com and were-here.com and also read the O'Reilly book on ActionScript. I learnt more about functions, arrays, loops, and smartclips even more before I completed this chapter. After using those things over and over on several different tutorials, I felt I was ready to handle anything. So I go back to this book, and once again, I am lost. This book does NOT tell you how to create things step-by-step. I know Flash 5 functionality like the back of my hand, yet this book fails miserably because it is confusing. Take for example, the book tells me to create a movieclip, and then 2 more movieclips. Yet, at NO time does it tell you WHERE to place the movieclips. Whether they are to go on the main stage, inside each other, and whatnot. THEN, the book has the audacity to tell me to write a long 8 lines of codes that are BARELY explained, and after doing so, I look at the example .FLA that I downloaded from the book's web site, and the codes are COMPLETELY different. This is a sad sad sad book, and I recommend that you do NOT get this book. The only good thing about this book is that it has some sample codes that you MAY be able to use. Once again, DO NOT buy this book unless you are an expert of ActionScript and you are just trying to fill in the gaps rather than learn it.
Rating: 
Summary: Too, Bad, So Much Potential
Review: Yes, I have to agree...One thing that simply should not be tolerated in any teaching venue, is teaching people mistakes.
This is not the first FOE book, or even the first book,
(yes, Moock's ivory tower work) that I have found mistakes in the code examples. I am a student at this point, and yes, I
don't fully "get it", as well I shouldn't. If we were all at the "intermidiate to advanced" level we wouldn't need these books. Go through hand coding one of the examples, then watch it fail miserably. Go back and re-read it, compairing it to the code in the book and get very frustrated because "you don't get it". Then give up and re-type the whole thing. Watch it fail miserably. By this time, your learning experience is wasted. Then go to the downloaded code and hold it next to the code in the book. Viola! Then ask yourself "What the hell did I just learn?" By that time you begin to question the whole book and your teaching experience is wasted and compromised. How long would a college professor last if he/she did the same thing? Do we check our examples before we publish?
I think not. So sad, FEO, your on the bleeding edge, but in your rush to publish, I think you may bleed to death. I'm one of your best customers, I've bought all of your action script series, including New Masters 2001, because the kernel is there, as are loads of mistakes. I've held off on writing one of these poor reviews, but now I feel compelled to ask, "When are you guys gonna hire a decent proof reader and someone to varify the code examples, as well as the lesson progressions?" I hope that packaging, marketing and merchandising has not become your singular focus, because at least that component of your efforts seems to be working very well.
(see carls jr., any current boy band, windows for dummies, the gap)
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