I would describe myself as an intermediate or above actionscript programmer and this book was very useful to me. I do agree that a beginner would get lost quickly and it is lacking in tutorials, but for someone who already has a good foundation in AS and wants to extend their knowledge, this book has quite a bit to offer.
I found especially useful the sections that introduce using xml, Coldfusion and php with Flash and the introduction of the new video and tweening enhancements in Flash 8. The section on custom classes and also the best practices for scripting has helped me as well. The code in this book is written much better than anything I've seen in the Lynda series, Visual Quickstart, or Friends of Ed, all of which are very basic and sometimes contain bad code. If you're seroius about AS programming, I recommend this title.

I bought this book mostly as a reference, and when browsing through it, I realized that this is not a utility for learning actionscript at all. Were I just learning actionscript for the first time from this book, I would be lost. I recommend Lynda.com's video courses for actionscript or picking up a book from Friends of ED, such as Foundation ActionScript for Flash 8. Friends of ED always has high quality books, and although I've not read the newest Foundation ActionScript, it has to be better for the beginner than this one. Save your money and invest in the ActionScript 2.0 Reference from Macromedia, or better yet, just use the amazing help resource built in to Flash itself!

What both of these reviewers forget to mention is that this book is essentially word for word a published version of the on-line help availble in the Flash 8 help menu. That probably explains all of those terms that aren't explained too well -- this is a hypertext document.

Let me preface this comment by stating I've only read about 125 pages so far. Having said that, I would have to agree with Robert from Australia - this book is better suited for an intermediate user who has some programming experience. This book has a lot of good info (from what I've read and scanned over) but I think the organization could be much better. Often terms are used that have not even been defined till later in the chapter. This gets a little confusing for someone like myself with little programming knowledge. I'm looking forward to finishing this text but I can tell it will be a bit of a challenge because of its organization. It really is designed more like a reference book because there are many statements like "For more information [on such and such] see....." throughout the text. I just wish they wouldn't have referred to this book as a 'beginning' book for learning Actionscript 2.

I was a little dissapointed to find the lack of tutorials that you could follow like I have found in earlier version of actionscripting books from Macromedia. I wouldn't recommend this book for the beginner as I feel it is more suited to the intermediate / advanced flash developer who already has a solid understanding of actionscripting and could use this book as a reference book. If you are looking for hands on tutorials then this isn't the book for you.