Rating: 
Summary: Great introduction to OOP
Review: -This book provides a great introduction to OOP concepts, design patterns, coding styles and other techniques that are vital in producing quality applications.
-This book will be used mostly as a learning tool, and not so much as a reference tool.
-I am working on developing some applications but nothing too complex at the moment. If you are looking for a book to develop simple applications, or just a want a reference guide to flashMX objects and components DONT buy this book. But, if you are however developing more complex applications that need to be upscaled later, are connected to external datasources etc BUY this book. It will give you examples of best practices and ways of solving your application development questions. Another plus comes in the fact that it is based on ActionScript 2.0, so you will be coding with the most up to date, highest performance and capability available today.
Rating: 
Summary: Flat out incredible
Review: As a long time Flash Developer and having used ActionScript 1.0 extensively, I have really benefitted from this book. Colin answers so many questions about best practices and takes an extremely practical approach to Flash development - obviously born of considerable experience. His explanation of OOP is very good as well. I can't recommend this book enough. Just get it - it has the answers you're looking for.
Rating:
Summary: Tight language overview at the right depth
Review: At right around five hundred pages this book is just about the right length to cover the core of the Actionscript 2.0 language. It's split into three parts with the vast majority in the first part which covers the language fundamentals; the new typing structure, the new class structures, exceptions, interfaces and the rest of the language enhancements.
Part two, which is only about sixty pages, is where the book touches metal on the Flash player. So be warned, this book does not cover both the language and the Flash player context. It covers the language in depth.
Part three covers design patterns, which personally I think is optional in this context. Though the coverage is restricted to the most commonly used design patterns; observer, singleton, model-view-controller, and delegation. And these all have their uses in the Flash client coding context.
The majority of the book is solid, tight introduction to the entire language of Actionscript 2.0, not just the new features. I gave the book four stars instead of five because of the limited emphasis on reference materials, and the minor diversions into the Flash Player environment, which wasn't too bad, and the patterns stuff, which while it was well done, was strictly optional.
Rating: 
Summary: Good coverage of AS2.0 but leaves out data connectivity
Review: Colin Moock is extremely talented in all areas of Flash, and object oriented programming.
In general, this is book has very good ceverage of actionscript best practices, when implementing an application that uses the AS2.0 class framework. That is what gets the 3 stars. Now the missing part. I include myself in the 99.9% of all Flash MX 2004 developers that are building Rich Internet Applications. Rich Internet Applications need to connect to and update data, whether using Flash Remoting, Web Services, or both. This book gives no coverage to data connectivity using the runtime Actionscript 2.0 classes. Although you can accomplish this in the authoring environment, this has a negative effect on runtime performance, as well as not adhearing to the MVC design approach that object oriented programming promotes. There are currently no books that cover the data connectivity classes in AS2.0, a fact I find to be truely unbelievable.
Rating:
Summary: Thrilling
Review: Have you ever read Essential ActionScript 2.0, by Colin Moock?
It's the blockbuster followup to his action packed Actionscript for Flash MX The Definitive guide and it just getting crazy as I read it. Now variables HAVE to be declared. It's like a fascism that these variables have to declare what type they are before anyone can interact with them. I picture them scurrying around the system architecture as if it were post-War Prague, carrying their papers just trying to get to their destinations. But there's more! There are ways around variable declaration, that fool the system into thinking one variable type is quite another and doing this brings about _system instability_. Yes, the revolution is on as some variable sneak through the system passing themselves off as others and then throwing a monkeywrench into the works. This is edge of your seat intrigue as only the Master, Colin Moock, can bring to the table.
Rating:
Summary: AS2 inner works for everybody
Review: I have Flash MX 2004 Pro (the software), but have so far mainly used MX (Flash 6) as I have no programming background and had no idea about all this "classes" thing.
This book has explained everything to know, from classes, subclasses, interfaces, coding practices etc, to code libraries, packages, typing, swc export, and patterns.
Thanks, Colin, now I'm ready to start using MX 04!
Rating:
Summary: Great for Developers looking to
Review: I'm a java / C++ developer, and my first Flash MX apps were good, but lacking in standard OOP practices. After reading some other OOP books on actionscript, I was still lacking. Then with the release of MX 2004 and Actionscript 2.0, I knew that I was only a stones throw away from crossing the oop divide. This book was that stone. Moock has done a wonderful job of finally laying out how to utilize the flash environment to create robust applications.
My favorite section is the portion on Patters. Some great patterns in there that you will use over and over again.
My last advice would be for those of you who are interested to swing by the Actionscript community online. And starting with the flash blog agregator is a great place to start.
(...)
Rating:
Summary: Thank the Programming Gods for Colin Moock
Review: This is the third Moock book I've read, and once again, cannot recommend it strongly enough.As usual, he writes with a clean, readable style. Complex topics are made accesible via authoritative knowledge and clear examples. The differences between ActionScript 1.0 (Flash MX Actionscript) and ActionScript 2.0 are explained. It's nice to know, and a little elss intimidating than I expected, that relatively little has changed with the language. His earlier work, the seminal "ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide" is as indispensable as ever. Moock explains that less has changed with the actual language than has changed with "how" one writes an ActionScript application. He then explains Object Orient Programming as it relates to ActionScript 2.0 and provides a primer of best practices the budding (or established) programmer should follow. The book concludes with sample applications highlight various design patterns. After reading this masterpiece, you'll be less intimidated and more prepared to upgrade your coding efforts.
Rating:
Summary: It's like being back in math class... (yawn)
Review: Though you'll be bleary-eyed and exhausted at the conclusion of each lengthy and dense chapter, the book is worth adding to your ActionScripting Library (right next to ActionScripting in Flash MX by Philip Kerman, which is the only ActionScript book I'd give 5 stars)
The only real shortcomings here (other than the lack of data connectivity topics, as another reviewer noted) are the author's occasional forrays into how ActionScript compares to Java (not learning Java so I don't care, thank you), and the occasionally convoluted examples (you can tell someone used to work at Macromedia when they weave four different concepts into one example, obfuscating the topic at hand).
//Also annoying are explanations
//commented out in code samples
//instead of beside the code in
//callout boxes. This makes all
//the scripts four times as long
//as they need to be, and much
//harder to read.
Nonetheless, the author does do a good job dividing the content onto fundamental OOP concepts, and includes a usefule appendix covering methods and events of all the classes (noting the errors in Macromedia's own documentation).
For someone without any programming experience outside of ActionScripting (like myself), this book is challenging to plod through, but doable. But learning ActionScripting is like learning to practice law (instead of learning every statute on the books, lawyers focus on legal prcedents, and research their own issues). That's what this book is like: a primer on advanced ActionScript "precedents". After reading it, you'll have a better general understanding of how solutions can be implemented, but you'll still need to visit the Flash Developer Center and the HELP panel to make applications that really work.
Rating:
Summary: Oooooooh, so THAT's how to do _____ in AS 2.0
Review: What a relief! I thought my project was a death march. Between: -- the enormous changes from AS 1.0,
-- the bugs (perhaps not all that many, but occuring in critical spots), and
-- the overly terse (to say the least) documentation from MM, I was ready to give up and become a greeter at Wal-mart. That's not to say that THIS book is verbose, because it's not. It is extremely terse, but not OVERLY terse: I read it with a highlighter in one hand, just to mark the sentences that would have been paragraphs if word-count were directly proportional to importance. Colin Moock says it once, and you'd better get it on the first pass. That's not a complaint, just an observation; a heads-up for those who skim. Pay attention! However, if you do pay attention, the essentials are all there, as advertised. They are in a logical order, they are well presented, and (hallmark of an experienced teacher) the consequences of mistakes are included. Just as good street directions include an "if you see _____, you need to turn around" clause, this book tells what will happen if you ignore an "essential" (or, for that matter, if you just choose a different way to skin a given cat.) In the same way, Moock is aware that this is an imperfect world; that object-orientation is a tool that makes sense in some situations, but not in all; and that sometimes good-enough is perfect. Not an OOP absolutist approach, at any rate. MM's implementation of ECMA script may be lacking in some of the finer points, and in some of the grosser points as well, but AS 2.0 is coming in, and AS 1.0 is going out -- at least for OOP. If you have any intention of adopting OOP practices in your Flash programming, you need this book.
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