This book is totally unlike other books on ActionScript, and that is both its strength and its weakness.

First of all, the claim that this book could be used by someone with no knowledge of programming is laughable and misleading. Chapter One goes through all of Object Oriented Programming, including such arcana as page 22's "Access-control modifiers for instance variables." No one without programming experience can understand why or how this woud be useful or learn how to use it. If you haven't done programming, choose a different book.

Other books begin with the Flash environment, and introduce bits of ActionScript on the timeline in an inductive manner:
on (press) {
amountPaid = Number(paid.text);
amountOwed = Number(owed.text);
}
You'll see none of that in this book, except for Chapter 29, which introduces programming in the Flash environment. None of the code sits on the timeline--this is ActionScript as a programming langusage, with packages, and stand-alone code files.

On the positive side, this book really does explain the language as a language, so for us programmers, there's no need to wonder about syntax, language features, error handling, etc.--it's all here. You'll learn how to create objects with their own events and listeners, about dynamic instance variables, about using try...catch...throw...finally error handling, and many other features unlikely to be covered in other books on ActionScript.

Because ActionScript is specific to Flash (and Flex), the book does cover the events you'll care about: mouse activity, key presses, screen updating, ENTER_FRAME vs. timer, stage resizing, loading, and so on. It provides excellent information on sandboxes and security I did not know and does a good job of dealing with text fields from a programming perspective. So it does cover much of value in the Flash context, and that in more detail than other ActionScript books I've read.

In summary, I find this more of a reference book than a tutorial. For the topics it covers, it goes into great depth. If you are a game developer or are writing a major application, you need this book. On the other hand, if you want to develop simple Flash programs and want to buy only one book, this isn't it. It won't teach you the simplest basics (putting stop(); on frame 1 of a movie clip) that you need for practical Flash programming. As a reference, however, it's indispensible.

The content is good and rather thorough, but only if you're a cover-to-cover reader. If you're looking for a reference, this is not the book for you. The index is absolutely terrible, and the table of contents is no help at all. It's impossible to find the simplest things. The only way you're going to find what you want is to scan or read the entire book.

I read this book about a year ago and it provided a great basis for learning the language. At the time, I was really only familiar with VB, VBA, and a small amount of C++ and Java. Also, I had never worked with AS2, so this and Flash were both very new to me.

At first, I did not understand/have use for some of the topics. For example, the discussions around namespaces, dynamic variables, and the XML stuff just didn't do it for me. However, after using AS3 vigorously for the past 6 months or so, I have needed those topics (badly) and this book works as an excellent reference guide.

There are two things, however, that really make this book great. The first is how basic it stays (for the most part). The author is incredibly adept at making complicated things make a lot of sense. The second, specifically, is the discussion around garbage collection. What an important subject (and I had no idea how important it was when I first read this)!

I can honestly say that had I not read this book before diving in, I would not have been near as far along in the learning process with AS3 as I am now.

Buy this book. Keep this book. You'll use it over and over again.

Bought this book because it was the only O'Reilley I could find that looked like it could be useful for beginners. It's not. If you are a programmer, then this book would probably be a great reference to one wanting to learn actionscript. If you are new to programming in any way and are wanting to learn actionscript, look for something else--this book isn't it.

If you have a experience developer or have some JavaScript skill this book is for you. I've been a web developer for several years now. I throwing myself into the web design field and this a very handy book (not matter its size) it has help me get into flash so well and now moving into flex. Great examples and easy to understand and follow. It's being full of help for me.