Customer comments on this selection.
 Satisfactory
The book is ok. It might not give you the "punch" that you need to open your eyes about Flash, but its fine for bigginers who want a hands on approach to learning.
 If you really want to learn how to make things work in Flash, this is the book for you because
I have tried to learn Actionscript for around 5 years and bought several books about this theme so far. So, this year I told myself: "You love Flash... So you HAVE TO understand Actionscript because you need to be more professional!". Ok... So I started studying again from the begining searching on the internet for the meaning of terms like variables, events, methods, object, classes, etc... just to check if I had left some important concepts behind. But even knowing those concepts, I still could not find myself writing code from the scratch! This book from Kerman cleared my mind and taught me how to implement code within the scope of a real Flash project. It guided me troughout the whole process of making a Flash application and made me understand how a Flash professional like Kerman deals when facing to everyday's Actionscript's challanges. So that's really a good choice for you to understand how you can implement a Flash project from the basis. Important: read every page carefully. If you dont't undestand a single line, try do do it so. You will realize that you have a priceless book in your hands to really get your job done!
 Can't recommend
I wouldn't say the book is "totally useless" but the decision the author made to serve up ActionScript without explanation because he thought we "didn't want to get our hands dirty" was a bad one. I see in his reply that he says he never claimed to do otherwise, but you don't realize this until you have read two chapters.
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br /I would prefer it if he had given us less projects but gone over the code in his .as files for us.
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br /Also, the author should understand that no one buys a book to get ready-made projects. We are buying these books to learn how to do these things on our own. If I just wanted a ready-made project I could just Google what I want and find one of the countless FLA examples people are good enough to share online. When I buy a book, its so I can learn to do it myself.
Better books elsewhere... Not for those trying to Learn quickly
With all due respect to the author, (who obviously knows his stuff quite well), this book is terrible for learning. The author, however, does not promise to teach you, which is in its way his safeguard. You are not meant to be taught, so do not expect to learn. The information the book contains is mostly lots and lots (and lots) of discussion ABOUT Actionscript put in a way as though Actionscript gurus would sit around discussing functions and classes and whatnot. If you are not up to reading 'about' Actionscript, skip this book. The first 57 pages bored me to tears... I guess I suffer a bit too much from A.D.D. to be able to sit and read 'about' Actionscript. Instead, I want to LEARN Actionscript, so that perhaps one day I, too, can be a guru sitting around, drinking my Red Bull and discussing Actionscript like some people discuss nuclear fission or jet propulsion.
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br /If you are the type who can handle reading and reading and reading in order to learn some minor information regarding a complex scripting language, best of luck to you with this book. However, if you're (obviously) dull minded like myself and cannot learn from reading paragraph after paragraph of stuff like this:
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br /"...although the third-pary product Captionate...is needed to inject Caption and Marker cue points, these cue point types are definitely worth including in this list...." then this book is not for you. For me, however, just tell me WHY and show me HOW.
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br /When will someone write a book which is clear and concise, which demonstrates step-by-step in as few words as possible how to do something (other than tweening and drawing) in Flash? I've got a dozen books from which I've been able to learn a few things, but for the most part I find myself falling asleep reading the same thing over and over again. I don't want theories on how I can write a function and an array; I don't want simplistic examples that leave me wondering how to do something a bit more complicated. I need real world examples, real world learning. Write a complex function and teach me how to do it! Don't tell me I can use XML, show me HOW to use XML. Be creative! Inspire me! I have projects to do, and don't have time to sit and read and read and read... I don't have time to cross reference with the Flash Bible to try to figure out what you're talking about, either.
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br /Lynda publishes some better books, (in particular to learning Actionscript in a real-world example), the Beyond the Basics book is excellent.
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Not worth it a nickel
I bought this book last month due to some good feedbacks. But when I read, it seems the book is too much unnecessary words just to make it look thick but the actual content is thin. I would suggest to learn from the help section of the flash program itself. It's much more clear and right to the point not like this book. From there then google up and you will find a lot of more better tutorials than this book and best of all, it's free!
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