So I recently have been thinking about investing in a book.
Note that I am not out of school and plan on developing/writing code for a recreational, fun purpose.
I do not intend to get a job programming.
My choices were -
ActionScript Cookbook
Like most O’Reilly classics, ActionScript Cookbook is great for learning and mastering Actionscipt for Flash MX along with C. Moock’s ASDG. Joey Lott also has a website with lessons on OOP. Excellent!
By: Lara Gaur
ActionScript Bible 2nd Edition
This is a fantastic book on AS3. If you are doing any type of major AS3 development then this books is a gem. It goes through the basics of variable declaration to classes and how the AS3 Environment uses them build RIA and flash content.
I also bought Essential ActionScript 3.0 (Essential) with this one to make sure that I get two explanations on each element of the language. When comparing both of them, The bible is good in some areas of explanation and the Essentials is vice versa.
Overall if you are going to be working with the AS3 language this is a impressive book to have in your arsenal for understanding and implementation of the language.
By: B. Tague “Book-a-holic”
Essential ActionScript 3.0
This book is a masterpiece, to my mind.
It doesn’t cover all possible topics, but is quite definitive and very user friendly on core concepts, with a lot of practical exemples, and, last but not least, is very nice to read.
By: Anonymous
[CENTER]1st choice[/CENTER]
I saw this book recommended a lot to people who were just starting. It seemed to have a lot of in depth material and source code. I haven’t seen it IRL so I can’t judge but O’Reilly always is a good choice. This book seems to give people epiphanies as they read. They (the people in the comments on Amazon and oreilly) seem to be amazed at the concepts that this book teaches. That being said, would a purely conceptual learning experience help? Probably not, with concepts from 2003.
[CENTER]2nd choice[/CENTER]
This was a book that I saw at Micro Center. It had a nice looking cover but beyond aesthetics it was a HUGE book. This book was realease. I looked through and came to the conclusion that this book was a good reference. It seems like the best out of the two but idk if size really matters. The comment above states how some area of this book were good and others weren’t which makes me second guess this book. It is also the most recently published of the three
[CENTER]3rd choice[/CENTER]
Essential Actionscript 3.0 was the first book recommended to me but I’m still weary of it. I have heard that its has a variety of things in it but it doesn’t touch on the 3D part. It was also released 2 years ago meaning the things it covers may be outdated with the flash player update. This book has a very large amount of basic things in it such as garbage collection, variables, etc. but would this be the best one if I were to get more serious about coding?
All in all, I can wait on this book but my learning experience purely over the internet hasn’t been quite what I expected. I haven’t learned some of the things that seem to be more basic
