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ActionScript books and learning resources?

KosmoKosmo
edited July 2006 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
I have taken shine to Flash again, especially the more complex things, not the graphics necessary. I know that we have few Flash aficionados, so recommend good books and learning resources to start from, maybe some open source flash programs to poke around.

Comments

  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    edited July 2006
    O'Reilley (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/actscript2/) is your friend... I've got Actionscript for Flash MX and it is basically my bible. Have bought a few other general Flash books before but don't read them much to be honest, and they seem to date very fast. Websites: http://flash-db.com/Board/ (for fast advice on Flash and also server-side integration woes etc) http://www.emllabs.com/ (about to relaunch, but still some good stuff in the old version of the site) http://www.gotoandlearn.com/ (for some nobrainer screencast tutorials) http://www.kirupa.com/ (for some good tuts) http://www.actionscript.org/tutorials.shtml (for more of the same) http://www.moock.org/webdesign/flash/ (tons of stuff including some nice tutorials that are great for learning good syntax and methods - eg http://moock.org/lectures/yourFirstClass/) On the subject of classes, apparantly they're the way to go, as they are reusable. I'm still leaning this though... And finally remember to use http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/ to embed your swfs ;-) I've also been advised to use http://www.eclipse.org/ and the FDT Flash plugin (http://www.powerflasher.com/fdt/flashsite/flash.htm) as a faster way of compiling actionscript and classes... although I've not really tried this properly yet, and it's probably something to try later on.
  • imathisimathis
    "Have bought a few other general Flash books before but don't read them much to be honest, and they seem to date very fast."

    I agree. I bought an Actionscript book from O'Rielly just before the release of MX 2004 and AS2. With AS3 coming out soon, You may want to hold off till O'Rielly releases one of those. But hey, you'll probably be coding for older versions for a while, so if that's the case go ahead and get the actionscript 2 title mentioned above.

    I rarely used Actionscript books for reference on a project. Mostly I read them while away from my computer. The O'Reilly writing style lends it self well to learning concepts but it isn't fast enough for reference IMO. For my reference I usually use the built in help. It does a pretty good job of explaining everything with at least one or two examples, and I can search and copy and paste code.

    I've bought a good number of O'Rielly books, but I would prefer to access them digitally on my computer so I can search and copy and paste and so I don't have to lug those big books around. I did some searching for them on the web, and I was able to find some that were released in .chm format (windows help) you can use chmox in os x to read them. I don't know about the legality of those producing the books, but I figure if I bought them, there's nothing wrong with me having a copy on my computer to reference as well. I hope O'Reilly will start releaseing thier books this way as well, because I found it much more useful as a reference in that format.
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