Foundation ActionScript for Macromedia Flash MX 2004 by friends of ED

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Foundation ActionScript for Macromedia Flash MX 2004

by friends of ED

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Label:	friends of ED
UPC:	689253150573
Pages:	500
Binding:	Paperback
Publication Date:	2004-04-26
Published By:	friends of ED
ASIN:	1590593057
Category:	Book

Authors

Sham Bhangal

Editorial Reviews and Product Descriptions

Product Description

Flash guru Sham Bhangal brings us the third edition of everybodys favorite beginner level Flash scripting book: Foundation ActionScript. With the release of Flash MX 2004, scripting in Flash has moved from being a desirable asset to an essential skill in the world of web design and development. ActionScript is, quite simply, the key to real power in Flash. Flash is now both a design tool and a development tool, and ActionScript can easily scare designers. This book is for anyone who has ever looked in awe at a cutting-edge Flash site, then taken a look at some code, and run in the other direction. Learning ActionScript with friends of ED will not turn you into a boring programmer, it will turn you into someone who finally has the power to achieve what they want with their web design, and can liberate their creative urges. This book will take you from knowing nothing about ActionScript to a firm knowledge that will allow you to exercise a previously unimaginable amount of power over your Flash movies. It does this with fully worked examples throughout, and a case study that will leave you with a cutting-edge Flash site by the end of the book. The book is practically orientated, and assumes no previous knowledge of coding, making sure that the you can actually use ActionScript to build a working website via real and detailed examples and case studies. Summary of Contents: Chapter 01: Interactive Flash Chapter 02: Making plans Chapter 03: Movies that remember Chapter 04: Movies that decide for themselves Chapter 05: More power, less script Chapter 06: Movies that remember how to do things Chapter 07: Objects and classes Chapter 08: Objects on the stage Chapter 09: Modular ActionScript Chapter 10: Sprites Chapter 11: Drawing API Chapter 12: Sound Chapter 13: Advanced ActionScript

Customer Reviews

Bhangal thinks beginners are what? - Reviewed on 2005-07-07

6 customers found this review helpful.

I am sorry , reading the reviews I thought this would be great , so I bought it.I must say editing is horrible , no online help(wrote 5 mails not even 1 answer),lot of mistake in book.The code style changes often so the beginner is bit lost.Then Bhangal suddenly introduces heavy coding without explaining much often (Math.random()*5) +3 or Math.round()...he didn't explain the parameters of random no. selection in AS.
only thing I can say you need to do this book more than once to get hang of AS if u r really a total beginner like me.
If looking a fast way don't get into it if u r a total beginner

Foundation ActionScript for Macromedia Flash MX 2004 - Reviewed on 2005-03-29

2 customers found this review helpful, 1 did not.

Mr. Bhangal's wonderful teaching style and excellent writing make this a truly easy and painless experience.

Explained in plain english how to actually *do something* with action script.

Great examples and analogies really drive the concepts home. I think its a big help that Mr. Bhangal is a designer and can speak to a person on a visual level.

And, I had a question, e-mailed Mr. Bhangal, and he got right back to me.

I am currently reading Foundation Dreamweaver MX 2004 and am also very impressed. The Friends of Ed is a great tool for designers looking to learn multimedia and web software.

Well done for beginners, slow for programmers - Reviewed on 2005-01-30

14 customers found this review helpful, 5 did not.

This book was done well for *not* programmers. I'm a relatively seasoned (6+ yrs) Java & C programmer--I found it incredibly slow.
Bhangal spends a ton of time convincing the reader that things such as "event handling" and "classes" are good. Anyone who has written a GUI for the Mac, Windows, X or Java will find a majority of the content incredibly tedious.
The last chapter on "Advanced Actionscript" starts to touch on the areas I find most valuable--specifically scope, sub-classing, the differences between AS 1.0 & 2.0. But that was really it.
Again, for non-programmers or designers (for whom I'm assuming this was designed) I think this might be a great book. Bhangal goes to great lengths to explain the "why's" of programming concepts. For programmers, I'd suggest Macromedia Press's "Flash MX Professionsl 2004 Application Development" by Jeanette Stallons.

Informative but a bit sloppy - Reviewed on 2004-07-19

2 customers found this review helpful.

Overall I found this book helpful in taking me to the next level of ActionScript. The main project of the book from beginning to end is the building of a website called Futuremedia. This web page makes use of many cool tricks the author takes you through step-by-step with pretty good explanations. To teach the reader how to implement these techniques, several smaller coding projects are used to introduce programming concepts that will be later used in the more complex Futuremedia project. Each chapter has several of these smaller examples which is very fortunate. About halfway through the book, due probably to some sloppy editing, the Futuremedia project gets derailed by missing steps and references to earlier explanations which never made it into the text. Being that I didn't find the Futuremedia project all that interesting, I eventually abandoned working on the book's main project and concentrated on the smaller projects contained in each chapter. These are all complete.
The author's writing style is easy to follow and he tries to explain concepts so non-programmers can grasp them, which is the main reason I stuck with it to the last chapter.
If you are looking to move from the simple coding of buttons, movie clips and basic timeline animation, this book still has some good information to offer.

Informative but a bit sloppy - Reviewed on 2004-07-19

1 customer found this review helpful.

Overall I found this book helpful in taking me to the next level of ActionScript. The main project of the book from beginning to end is the building of a website called Futuremedia. This web page makes use of many cool tricks the author takes you through sep-by-step with pretty good explanations. To teach the reader how to implement these techniques, several smaller coding projects are used to introduce programming concepts that will be used in the more complex Futuremedia project. Each chapter has several of these smaller examples which is very fortunate. About halfway through the book, due probably to some sloppy editing, the Futuremedia project gets derailed by missing steps and references to earlier explanations which never made it into the text. Being that I didn't find the Futuremedia project all that interesting, I eventually abandoned working on the book's main project and concentrated on the smaller projects contained in each chapter. These are all complete.
The author's writing style is easy to follow which is the main reason I stuck with it.
If you are looking to move from simply coding buttons and simple timeline animation, this book still has some good information to offer.

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Book Subjects

Computer Software Packages
Computers
Computers - Other Applications
Computer Books: Web Programming
Computer Graphics - Flash
Internet - Web Site Design
Computers / General
Computers / Programming / Software Development
Computer Graphics - Game Programming
ActionScript (Computer program language)
Macromedia Flash MX.
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