This is how more how-to books should be written. Action Script is the real power behind putting zoom and power into Flash projects, but with its full feature set it can be intimidating to learn how to use properly and many books fail in really explaining the why and how or fail to give any practical real world examples and quickly go off the deep end on wordy explinations of the syntax leaving you hanging, wanting some practical how do I USE what I just read.

This book is different! Its loaded with PRACTICAL, useful well commented examples of USING the code explained with hundreds of code snipets that you can use immidiately as-is or with little modification.

Starts with simpler things like lucid explainations of common pitfalls of checking equality and comparing values to if else expressions, while loops, more complex conditional testing then moves into areas most newbies want to learn how to do, but don't really have any practical examples like how to change a movie's transparency, drawing tricks, masking, etc.. Then it moves into examples of arrays, targeting, making objects dragable, swapping levels, interaction with buttons, validating forms and so on.

The book is well written and while there is plenty of technical information it never gets bogged down under the weight of excessive theory, minutia on details you'll rarely use and quickly forget anyway. Its much more of a friendly 'how do I do this' kind of approach that probably will make you reach for it again and again as a quick reference to solve common problems.

The last 200 pages or so give details of several more meaty projects. Unlike several books that 'explain' Action Script but all too often leave you hanging on how to actual use it, here you see how to use it in real world conditions which will save you hours of frustrating trial and error.

This is how more how-to books should be written. Action Script is the real power behind putting zoom and power into Flash projects, but with its full feature set it can be intimidating to learn how to use properly and many books fail in really explaining the why and how or fail to give any practical real world examples and quickly go off the deep end on wordy explinations of the syntax leaving you hanging, wanting some practical how do I USE what I just read.

This book is different! Its loaded with PRACTICAL, useful well commented examples of USING the code explained with hundreds of code snipets that you can use immidiately as-is or with little modification.

Starts with simpler things like lucid explainations of common pitfalls of checking equality and comparing values to if else expressions, while loops, more complex conditional testing then moves into areas most newbies want to learn how to do, but don't really have any practical examples like how to change a movie's transparency, drawing tricks, masking, etc.. Then it moves into examples of arrays, targeting, making objects dragable, swapping levels, interaction with buttons, validating forms and so on.

The book is well written and while there is plenty of technical information it never gets bogged down under the weight of excessive theory, minutia on details you'll rarely use and quickly forget anyway. Its much more of a friendly 'how do I do this' kind of approach that probably will make you reach for it again and again as a quick reference to solve common problems.

The last 200 pages or so give details of several more meaty projects. Unlike several books that 'explain' Action Script but all too often leave you hanging on how to actual use it, here you see how to use it in real world conditions which will save you hours of frustrating trial and error.

I said "excellent companion" in the title since I think it goes hand in hand with Moock's excellent "definitive guide".

I am a C, Perl programmer, and have started developing programs in ActionScript and since it has its own peculiarities (and not all that well documented) it is useful to see them included in specific examples.

I found the parts on Flash Remoting quite helpful in giving me ideas and practical solutions. I could not in all honesty give it 5 stars since I was not as happy with his extensive reliance on components. I do not find them very convenient if I am developing with ActionScript (in fact even when using Flash I have sometimes found it easier to write a short script for movie clips rather than configuring and adapting ready made components).

This book travels almost everywhere with me, along with Colin Moock's ASDG2. Where ASDG2 stops Joey Lott picks up the pieces and assembles them into practical and useful examples that can be directly applied to everyday projects.

The Actionscript Cookbook should be a part of any developers library. Joey Lott's books consistently impress me as I've also found the Complete Flash Remoting to be invaluable to have around.

As the editor of the book, please allow me to respond to two inaccurate reviews...

In response to C. A. TBF's review of May 26, 2005 ("Too Many Examples DO NOT WORK"), I'd suggest he contact O'Reilly tech support (booktech (at) oreilly.com). As you can tell from the other reviews, other readers are not having the same problem. The code examples have all been thoroughly reviewed and the few errata are posted on O'Reilly's catalog page for the book. The code examples work. The reviewer must have forgotten to do something basic, like give a name to a movie clip using the Property inspector. If he writes to me or O'Reilly, we'll gladly help him solve any problems.

In other news...I have to take issue with the anonymous, 3-star review of December 23, 2003 entitled "An OK book for programmers"

A single book can't be perfect for every level of reader, but the near-unanimous 5-star reviews tell us we did a pretty good job. Certainly, there are occasional examples that mirror things that can be found in the documentation, because we strove to make the book as complete as possible. But I'd strongly disagree with the reviewer's statement that "A lot of the examples are obvious explanations of the AS documentation." The vast majority of the recipes are neither obvious nor found in the documentation.

Likewise, it is true that how to loop through an array should be known by skilled programmers, but the book also targets Flashers less familiar with ActionScript. Not every recipe is intended for every reader.

Lastly, the reviewer says that "Seemingly usefull [sic] functions, like recursively stopping everything in a MovieClip, are missing." Whereas it is true that the book cannot possibly cover every scenario, Recipe 7.10 describes how to recursively traverse the movie clip hierarchy to access nested clips. Furthermore, Recipe 7.3 discusses how to control playback, including stopping a movie clip. Any skilled programmer, as the reviewer purports to be, could easily combine those two techniques to achieve the desired goal. Had the reviewer written to O'Reilly or the author for technical support, we would have gladly clarified the situation for him (or her).

As a matter of principle, I have never before reviewed a book I've edited, but I felt obligated to point out the inaccuracies in the preceding review. Please forgive me, but I think the book is worth all of 5 stars.

I have been a professional programmer for about ten years now, and recently started working on ActionScript-heavy Flash applications. I don't really find this book that usefull.

A lot of the examples are obvious explanations of the AS documentation (eg, how to set the background of a TextField). Others should be know by any programmer (eg, how to loop through an array). Seemingly usefull functions, like recursively stopping everything in a MovieClip, are missing.

If you are a seasoned programmer, I would pass on this. If you are a beginning programmer, this may be handy.

This is from a designer-type.

Going from print to the web, Flash5 was easy for me to pick up. After a break of doing no Flash and coming back to it with Flash6 out for a few months, I was frustrated, uptight and bought every Flash6 book I could find by trusted authors in order to catch up, while at the same time trying to get a big flash site done for a client.

Nothing helped. I kept getting more and more frustrated. Everytime I saw the words "call-backs", "this", "method" or "object", I would get knots in my stomach.

Joey Lott not only helped me get the website done, but his Actionscript Cookbook finally got me to understand Flash6 concepts. Flash5-free at last, no more knots in my stomach. I can now read and understand all the other books I bought! Now that Flash7 is out, I'll be buying every title that comes out by Joey Lott. He is the consummate teacher, and includes explains what you need to know, and why you need to know it, in concise, easy-to-understand verbiage.

In my opinion, Joey's Actionscript Cookbook and Colin Moock's Actionscript, the Definitive Guide, and are the best values out there for Flash6.

I've been playing around with actionscript for one and half year by now, read a lot of books, understood all the concept, but once I want to jump in and actually start write somthing useful, I always got stuck. All I want to say is that this book got both thesis and how it actually going to work, clear explanation and tones of examples.

This book is clearly excellent, once you'll use the files from this book, you will never want to code a project in MX without them, so many usefull actionscript in one place, I just finished reading it from cover to cover.
Even though Flash MX 2004 is out now, I still code all my projects in MX, so this book is really a must have; every subject is covered!

I've bought a number of Flash books over the years, but this book is hands-down my favorite. It works beautifully as an Actionscript reference or a compendium of tutorials. All of the code is wonderfully practical, and Joey's accompanying explanations are concise and clear.

I cannot recommend this book enthusiastically enough!

I have the book and it fits a nice niche in my AS library. I also have MX books: ASDG2, the Friends of ED "ActionScript Reference", and Joey Lott's "Complete Flash Remoting MX" as my reference library. Of course I have tutorial books such as "OOP with AS" by Hall and Wan and a variety of earlier MX books by Macromedia. There is some overlap of course, but often the different perspectives on the problem and solution can be enlightening. "AS Cookbook" gets to the point a little faster than other books I have or seen. Joey has been great about helping out in the newsgroups and forums and I'm sure that is where he developed much of his material.

- jim
Santa Clara, CA

For a technical cookbook, this book is a pleasure to read and easily qualifies as best in its genre. It is published as Flash MX is being replaced with its 2004 version, but it should be a good reference for a long time, at least until another edition updates it to Flash MX 2004. Its 28 chapters are well organized with clear titles and well defined sections, a big help when one is looking for the right recipe to an every day coding problem. Joey Lott is a teacher of ActionScript, among other subjects, and that experience comes through in his lucid writing and straight forward examples. I will always keep this handy on my desk to refer to when the need arises.

I've been using Joey Lott's Actionscript Cookbook for the past two weeks and find it to be a great asset for my Flash Actionscript development.

I say 'using', because the cookbook format is intended to be more than a reference (see Actionscript for Flash MX). This book and the accompanying code samples have made it possible for me to move way ahead in my development efforts. The instruction for the code development, coupled with the code samples allows you to start cooking up your own Actionscript code to solve problems for your development requirements.

The range of problem solving covered in the ASCB is perfect, in that it covers most of the range of Actionscript, including managing XML files, Flash Remoting, FlashComm, Shared Objects and Components. Then Joey moves into the sample applications which you can dissect to really get a deeper understanding of what Flash MX is all about.

I've found the writing to be very accessible and it includes important tips on thinking about the way you write your code for re-usability, documentation and mapping out your project strategy.

In summary, I've put about 20% of this book to use and feel sure that it will be sitting next to my keyboard for the next six months until it's 70-80%. I own about four Flash/Studio MX books and wish they were all written like this.

What I might change if I were re-writing it. Skip the 'Basics' chapter at the beginning, although it is well written and many might find it useful, I didn't buy the cookbook for the basics. Second, it would be great to see a chapter on how the typical AS project lead organizes their code, works with remote servers, CVS and tips for creating optimum effeciency by doing x,y and z.

This book is not intended for beginners, but could be used that way if you were willing to dive in and understand Actionscript by dissection. I really think this is a great and unique resource.

I have to say that this is a great reference book for flash developers. I have the ASDGv2 and the reference from Friends of Ed and now this book. Having both this book and ASDGv2, all my questions get answered.

If you want a good book with good examples, this is for you.

I received this book 2 weeks ago and have not put it down. The author did a phenomenal job breaking down problems and could not have been any clearer on his solutions to the problem. This is not a how to book, rather it is the friend you're looking for at 3am when nobody else is awake. I have yet to run across something that I couldn't find the answer to in the AS Cookbook! I highly recommend this book to any Flash/ActionScript developer. Thumbs up to Joey Lott & O'Reilly.

Let me just say that I've never been disappointed by an O'Reilly Cookbook. They are always incredibly useful. They don't start from square one, but if you're still learning the language, they're great. This book is no exception. Rather, it's probably the best one I've read yet. It really fills in the missing parts of the language, in fact. If you want a method to submit an entire form to a CGI script, they've got one. The book is full of useful things like that.

My only complain about the book, and this is a minor one, is that the code for the sample applications in the last few chapters doesn't seem to function at all on my Mac - none of them. This is a little bit of a bummer, as I was looking forward to examining the apps as they functioned. But the wealth of practical knowledge that fills the rest of the book leaves me with no option but to give it five stars. If all that code functioned perfectly... I'd have to find a way to give it six.

This book is great teaching tool and time saver. I've been using Macromedia Flash since Flash 3 and this book has the most useful examples that I've seen.