Macromedia Flash MX ActionScript for Fun and Games [With CDROM]

by Gary Rosenzweig

Anyone with moderate Macromedia Flash experience who is looking to acquire or improve their understanding of ActionScript will find this book a valuable resource. Author Gary Rosenzweig is highly... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: CD-ROM
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0789727994
• ISBN13: 9780789727992
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: Que
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Flash MX Actionscript for Fun and Games

I found this book really helpful for making simple games for my website which is aimed at children. I'm a graphic and website designer with very little knowledge of programming as I use Dreamweaver and Flash to do all that backend stuff for me. It goes through everything in nice simple steps that even I can understand. I'd recommend it to people who have some knowledge of Flash and programming, definitely not beginners though.

Wonderful Book for Beginning ActionScripters

This is a very useful book in my opinion. What's especially helpful is the author literally breaks-down his code, line-by-line, so that the reader clearly understands what is going on. It's a great method for teaching programming - particularly for the beginning programmer, yet also contains some very nifty stuff that even hardcore veterans of the interactive world can find useful.The games are cute, yet very cool and adpatable. It shows good faith that the author even offers his games up for use by readers of the book. But to just borrow his code and replace his graphics with your own is to miss the real gem of this book, which is to instruct in the power and ease of Flash MX ActionScript. In just two weeks my working-knowledge of ActionScript has grown considerably.Many computer-how-to books on the market teach by using generic examples, but there is nothing generic about the working prototypes presented in this book. There is some pretty impressive stuff here with some particularly well done graphics and animation. It feels more like the reader is learning on "real-world" examples rather than tired old stock-in-trade tutorials.Buy (and read) this wonderful book and I guarantee that your Flash movies will improve considerably and in no time you'll be making some pretty impressive Interactive media. I am a professional animator and webmaster, but I always needed programmers who knew Java, C, or C++ to make the really cool stuff in the past. With the help of this book by Gary Rosenweig, those days are past history!

One of the Best ActionScript Books Out There!

Don't let the title fool you... this is a serious action-scripting book, specifically targeted for Flash-based games. You won't find any XML, Cold Fusion Integration, Database integration, etc., but that's not the scope of this book. If you want to learn how to use Flash ActionScript to manipulate movie clips, the Flash timeline, respond to user interaction, and create many different types of cool games that you see a lot on the internet, this book is for you. It is NOT a Flash book... it is an ActionScript book. The author assumes you are already competent with Flash basics. (I should also mention that you WILL learn a lot about Flash organizational skills as you work through the book.)The STRENGTH of this book is that it uses the entire book to concentrate on one subject, vs. other Flash books that try to be "everything to everyone" without ever going into enough detail on any one subject. This is similar to another excellent Flash book, "Flash Cartooning" by Mark Clarkson, which spends the whole book on simply just learning how to animate in Flash.

A Great Book to Start Learning Games

I liked the book. The beginning chapters are broken down into very short lessons that teach you the fundamentals of game programming. The latter chapters focus on complete games built upon the techniques taught previously. I was able to get started quickly since the book does a fine job of presenting the material.

What better way to learn than through fun and games?

I just picked up this book, and would definitely recommend it. Why? Because not only does it teach via projects, which means you learn by DOING - by actually creating, instead of by simply reading lengthy explanations of discrete pieces of code. Most importantly, however, you learn by creating FUN PROJECTS! It's one thing to write the code for a simple calculator, which, while good for teaching certain concepts, is quite BORING - it's another to write the code for a game or fun little flash "toy", which you can really enjoy. In the end, you learn the syntax and algorithm either way, but if you do it by creating games, it is that much more fun of a learning process. For beginners, this book dedicates its first few chapters to the basics of ActionScript. For intermediate scripters, it then jumps into fun applications of more intricate scripting methods - you learn new concepts by applying them to fun projects as you learn. Rock on.