ActionScript 3.0 Programming: Overview, Getting Started, and Examples of New Concepts

By William B. Sanders
January 2007
Pages: 74
Series: Short Cut
Format: PDF
ISBN 10: 0-596-52923-6 | ISBN 13: 9780596529239
(4) (Average of 3 Customer Reviews)

PDF description

This document employs reusable code examples to demonstrate the basic functionality of ActionScript 3.0 in the following topic areas: Packages and Classes; Display Programming; Movie Clips and Buttons; and Basic Structures. A concluding section helps those unfamiliar with OOP (Object Oriented Programming) and Design Patterns get acquainted with these concepts, as a knowledge of them will greatly benefit anyone getting into ActionScript 3.0 who wants to get the most out of it.
Full Description

ActionScript 3.0 Programming: Overview, Getting Started, and Examples of New Concepts is a 76-page document designed to introduce those familiar with general programming principles to ActionScript 3.0. ActionScript 3.0 compiles and runs much faster than preceding versions, and the reasons have much to do with the structural changes Adobe has added: You truly do need to use ActionScript differently than you have previously, if you're already ActionScript programmer. If you're new to ActionScript, but are looking at it from a Java or C++ or C# perspective, you may be intrigued at how different ActionScript is now compared with what you'd known it or heard it to be before.

This document employs reusable code examples to demonstrate the basic functionality of ActionScript 3.0 in the following topic areas: Packages and Classes; Display Programming; Movie Clips and Buttons; and Basic Structures. A concluding section helps those unfamiliar with OOP (Object Oriented Programming) and Design Patterns get acquainted with these concepts, as a knowledge of them will greatly benefit anyone getting into ActionScript 3.0 who wants to get the most out of it.

Featured customer reviews

Great Starter for Programmers, July 26 2008

Rating:

Submitted by Mark Alsop [Respond | View]

I selected this book as a primer and was exceedingly satisfied. It was just the right mix of information and samples to leverage a basic understanding of ActionScript into the programming concepts I bring to the table from my background in OOP and Procedural programming techniques. My familiarity with JavaScript was also helpful in that ActionScript shares many operators and programming constructs with JavaScript.

By the time I reached chapter 12 where there is a serious flaw in the sample code (a second class in nested inside the constructor class) I was able to quickly figure out what the problem was and rewrite the code so that the sample worked properly. For this I used what I had already learned from this book, the Flash CS3 help file and the Flash error message to localize information and correct the issue. Whether this was introduced on purpose or not it does provide a nice little test for the student to see how well they are doing.

For me this was the perfect starter book but Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3.0 are very rich programming environments and further study is needed.

Currently I’m in the middle of Learning ActionScript 3.0, The Non-Programmer's Guide to ActionScript 3.0, By Rich Shupe, Zevan Rosser, which is proving to be a good follow up.

After that I’ll tackle ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns, Object Oriented Programming Techniques, By William B. Sanders, Chandima Cumaranatunge and round things out with ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook, Solutions for Flash Platform and Flex Application Developers, By Joey Lott, Darron Schall, Keith Peters.

Wonderful Reference for Common Actionscript 3.0 Questions, June 26 2007

Rating:

Submitted by John Lindquist [Respond | View]

The ActionScript 3.0 Quick Reference gives the simplest examples of the most common tasks in Actionscript: Display programming, loading images, creating buttons, controlling depth, formatting text, etc. Because this is a “shortcuts” pdf, the pdf doesn’t overload you with explanations or examples. Instead it gives you enough to get started and then allowing you to experiment with different variations and ideas of your own. I think it’s a great jumping off point to familiarize yourself with the general workflow of Actionscript 3.0. The learning curve in Actionscript 3.0 may be a little steeper than 2.0, but once you learn how everything fits together with these examples, tackling new more difficult programming problems becomes second nature because Actionscript 3.0 is generally written as expected.

If you’re completely new to programming, you’d probably be better off finding a beginner’s Actionscript book as this doesn’t explain much of the “why” of programming, but it definitely shows the “how”. If you’re familiar with another programming language (especially one based on the ECMAScript standards), this pdf ought to teach you enough to get coding in Actionscript in no time. Also, if you’re familiar with Actionscript 2.0 and you’ve never worked with classes, this is for you. Lastly, if you’ve worked with Actionscript 2.0 and worked with classes and design patterns, there is some very important information (packages, internal, static, events, etc.) covered in the pdf, but nothing that you couldn’t quickly figure out by reading the Flex or Flash CS3 documentation or examples.

Excited about 3.0!, May 04 2007

Rating:

Submitted by Anonymous Reader [Respond | View]

First thing to consider is that you should have ActionScript version 3.0 when reading this document. It is intended to be a “hands-on” experience. The biggest drawback to this document is that I was unable to try out the examples. On the plus side, it was helpful to see what’s coming up when we do get 3.0. I really enjoyed the last section which reviews object oriented programming from an ActionScript 3.0 perspective. According to O’Reilly version 3.0 has grown into a full-fledged OOP language – not only in organizing and executing, but in compilation as well.

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