"No matter what your background, the pages that follow will provide you with some excellent knowledge, insight, and even a little bit of wisdom in the realm of Flash and ActionScript. Happy learning!" -- Branden Hall, from the Foreword Written by Flash insiders with extensive knowledge of the technology, this guide is designed specifically to help Flash designers and developers make the leap from ActionScript 2.0 to the new object-oriented ActionScript 3.0 quickly and painlessly. Formatted so you can find any topic easily, ActionScript 3.0 Quick Reference Guide explains:

• Object-oriented programming (OOP) concepts, such as packages and classes

• ActionScript 3.0 features and player enhancements that improve performance

• Workflow differences between ActionScript 2.0 and ActionScript 3.0 including tools, code editing, component sets, and image and font rendering

• Where did it go? A guide to help you find familiar features in ActionScript 3.0, such as global functions, operators, properties, and statements

• How do I? Step-by-step solutions for performing tasks with ActionScript 3.0, including input, sound, video, display, events, text, and more

Also included are overviews of Flash and ActionScript features and workflows. ActionScript 3.0 is a huge upgrade to Flash's programming language -- and this guide helps you upgrade your skills to match it.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 2 Ratings

Readable, Fun, Good Code, a Must-Have - 2008-12-21
Reviewer Rating:
I was browsing at Borders at Park Ave and 57th, where they had exactly one copy of this. I'd heard of this book but hadn't seen it yet--it was announced over the summer but O'Reilly kept delaying publication so the book could be current with Flash CS4. I looked up a few items in the ToC and index, and went straight to the checkout queue. I had to have this book right away! even if Amazon could sell it to me cheaper!

Okay, why is the book good? I've spent more time with it now. I'll give you my three biggest reasons:

1) It's readable. It really is. It's friendly and accessible. Did you ever enjoy those juvenile histories and biographies and How-and-Why science books that started out with something like, "Hi! This is a fun book, and we're going to take you on a fun journey, step-by-step. This is a great subject to be interested in! Aren't you happy? Well, we are!!!"?

Well, did you like books like that? I did, and I've always resented scholarly and technical books that didn't introduce themselves along those lines. So many of them are written like resentful documentation: "Go away. We hate you. This is only for ugly, squirrelly, socially backward people like US."

This book is overtly addressed to users of ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0, and those already using 3.0; to artists, designers, and developers of all stripes. It's all-inclusive. Like Rich Shupe's Learning ActionScript 3.0, it has a friendly, hand-holding attitude that goes through the length of the book.

2) A personal obsession: this book has a good section on how to write XML loaders that use HTML. This is a very poorly documented area of Flash. The ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook had a little bit on it, but the explanation was hard to follow and the code was buggy.

3) Another personal interest: SWF loaders and unloaders. This is the first book I've seen that tells you how to unload both the thing loaded and the "event listener" that keeps sitting there, using up processor time and space.

The book is also current with the less traditional Flash-related technologies, such as FlashDevelop and Flex.

Transitioning to AS3 - 2008-11-19
Reviewer Rating:
Rich Shupe & crew have made a terrific guide for transitioning from AS2 to AS3. Their examples are clearly written, typically showing code written in both versions and pointing out the advantages of AS3 by comparison. Speaking as someone who uses flash as a designer primarily, his book as gone a great way towards making AS3 a lot less intimidating. Great job, highly recommend it.

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