Review: Actionscript 2.0 Garage

Actionscript 2.0 Garage is a book that aims to get the job done. It is essentially a compilation of code snippets, each one providing a piece of commonly requested functionality.

TITLE: Actionscript 2.0 Garage
AUTHOR: Dan Livingstone
PUBLISHER: Prentice Hall
ISBN: 0-13-148475-3
PAGES: 302 coloured
CD: No
PRICE: $29.99 US / $41.99 CAN
Click here to order

My initial worry was that this would just be a big book of hacks. That might have been fine for Actionscript but putting Actionscript 2.0 on the cover comes with a little more responsibility. The point of AS2 is to apply some structure to AS1 and gladly this book kicks off with a good run through of the differences.

It's also a very entertaining read. The literary style is both hilarious and abrasive, and has a certain swagger that you'll either love or hate. Although the comments can be blunt and are definitely opinionated, Dan Livingstone knows his stuff so they are usually right on the money. It's definitely not a dry textbook.

Actionscript 2.0 Garage is split into fourteen sections and each of the sections covers several related topics. It's a bit of a cookbook but it still works if you decide to read it from cover to cover. Each topic gets a brief description and some example code to do the job, and each section is peppered with 'gotchas' and real world insights.

All the stuff you'd want to do is here: Working with components, importing and exporting data and playing sound and video to name just a few. The code looks good and unlike other so-called AS2 books the new syntax and subjects such as event listeners get more than superficial coverage. Most of the advice is solid, but there is the odd bad practice in there. For example the chapter on 'Adding methods to the built in classes'. Yes you can do it, but you really shouldn't.

That said it's the kind of book you might turn to in an emergency, just to get a demo out the door. In many ways it's a 'real world' Flash book. No matter how much we might wish that every project be a beautifully crafted example of object oriented nirvana - some of them are held together with spit and duct tape.

Actionscript 2.0 Garage is full of hard advice and it's funny to. It'll get you through a scrape and it covers the new stuff pretty well.

check it out

 

About John Dalziel

John Dalziel is a founding member of FlashMagazine and regularly reports from community events in the UK. He has also written for Macromedia, New Riders, Actionscript.com and Ultrashock.com.

 

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