Review: Actionscript 2.0 Dictionary

Ever wondered what happened to that big paper Actionscript manual that used to come with your boxed version of Flash? Well now it's digitally bundled inside the Help documentation with the product. What's more interesting though is that not having a manual in the box is not necessarily a bad thing.

TITLE: Actionscript 2.0 Dictionary
AUTHOR: Flash experts
PUBLISHER: Macromedia Press
ISBN: 0-321-22841-3
PAGES: 1028 b&w
CD: No
PRICE: $24.99 US / $37.99 CAN / £19.50 UK
Click here to order

It actually makes a lot of sense for both parties. From Macromedia's point of view it makes the product cheaper to produce and much lighter to ship. From the end users perspective the Help and AS syntax documentation (which has never been famous for its accuracy) can be instantly and continually updated online. With MX2004 you are even advised when new help content is available for download.

So why would want a printed manual? Well, sometimes it's just really handy. The only thing about the boxed manual though was that most professional Flash developers never used it. The standard reference work was (and still is) the ORielly Actionscript for Flash MX - The Definitive Guide (ASDG). You'll find a well-thumbed copy of Colin Moock's opus on every developer's desk.

There's no news of an updated ASDG in the works so if you are looking for a printed AS2 supplement then you might want to consider the Actionscript 2.0 Dictionary from Macromedia Press. This is what would have come in the box and when you see the size of it you'll understand why it didn't. It's a three-inch thick doorstop.

The format hasn't changed a great deal. Starting from the end: about half the book is given over to the Actionscript syntax reference and the usual appendices and this is the bit that ensures it'll sit next to your ASDG for the time being. Prior to that are all the introductory programming chapters from the MX2004 help documentation.

What you won't have seen before is a collection of specially commissioned articles by prominent Flash developers (including our own RIA columnists Steven and Ali from iteration::two). This should have been a good idea as the differences between AS1 and AS2 are largely conceptual. A few articles on software engineering theory would make a worthwhile addition.

Unfortunately there are just too many problems with this section that leave it feeling a bit bolted on. It should be said that I don't believe these to be the fault of the respective authors, more a failure in the QA and editing process due to publishing deadlines. For starters, somewhere between the projects being accepted and the book being published, all the source code got dropped.

In the hybrid application example there are numerous references in the text to loading FLAs and importing files. But without any downloads or a companion CD you'll pretty much have to type everything in from the book if you want to recreate any of the projects. Macromedia Press have nothing online and only one contributor (iteration::two) has made their source code available independently.

Worse still is that there are QA errors throughout. A perfect example is the explanation of event listeners. This goes into great detail about how to use ASBroadcaster as an event engine. Yes it works, and we've used it since MX but it's unsupported and undocumented (it's not even listed in the Dictionary at the back!) If the technical editors had been on the ball they would have used the opportunity to push readers towards the new mx.events.EventDispatcher class. Now we have conflicting information in Macromedia's own documentation.

The quality of the individual chapters varies but they are generally pretty good in isolation. There are the usual stylistic fluctuations common to multi-author publications but in the end they just don't pull together as a whole.

The worst thing is that the whole book feels a little rushed. In a perfect world this book would be your bible. It'd sit on your desk and you'd refer to it every day. But for that to happen you have to have confidence in it and when it feels rushed, that isn't going to happen. There's a reason Colin Moock's ASDG sits on every developers desk. It wasn't rushed, it's impeccably researched and we all have confidence in it.

With no ASDG2 on the horizon and despite being flaky in places, you will find the AS2 Dictionary a handy supplement. If you object to paying for a book that used to come bundled with the product then don't panic - you can afford it. The recommended price is twenty quid and Amazon have it for much less. For a 1000+ pages it's a bargain.
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