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Book Reviews by our Members
ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for Flash Developers
Joey Lott, Darron Schall, Keith Peters
Reviewed by: Ben Gomez Farrell
This is THE book you want to pick up if you already know Actionscript and you want to get caught up to speed on Actionscript 3 real fast. I started building something basic in Actionscript 3 from scratch, and I just referenced this book whenever I was stuck. If you're new to programming or new to Flash you may want to skip this book and pick up a more basic book, but for those that want to hit the ground running, and will get frustrated poring through chapters on the basics of Flash this is your book. For those that aren't familiar with Actionscript 2, but know other programming languages, this could also be a good book for you - but it will require a good level of programming savoire faire. Honestly, what can you really say about an O'Reilly Cookbook? It feels like I'm using a dictionary or encyclopedia to write a paper....it lives on your bookshelf, and you refer to it for 5 minutes, and then go back to your work with a complete understanding of what you wanted to know.
Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns
Joey Lott, Danny Patterson
Reviewed by: Ben Gomez Farrell
This book didn't pack that much bang for me. I read it after Head First Design Patterns and the Actionscript 3.0 Cookbook. If you had never read those books, then this is a great book for you if you want to learn Design Patterns for Actionscript 3. However, if you want to learn Actionscript 3, this book is light on AS3 basics. What this book discusses, rather well in fact, is Design Patterns for Actionscript 3. For those that aren't familiar with Design Patterns - this is not a graphic arts type book. Design Patterns are a collections of philosophies oon how to code your application. This book does a good job explaining Design Patterns as they pertain to Actionscript 3. Additionally, the first chapter discusses some application development and object-oriented programming methodologies that are great to brush up on. As good as this book is, I suggest reading Head First Design Patterns if you want to learn about Design Patterns, and don't mind that it's written for Java.
Programming Flex 2: The comprehensive guide to creating rich media applications with Adobe Flex
Chafic Kazoun, Joey Lott
Reviewed by: Ben Gomez Farrell
Why was this book such a page-turner for me? Could it be that I've been doing Flash work for years and want to see what all the hub-bub behind Flex is all about? Could it be that it was well written, and explained the concepts well? Could it be that I was on a 7 hour flight to California while I read it? I think all are true. In all seriousness, I feel like I have a pretty thorough picture of the basic concepts in Flex and what it can do. I've been actually too busy to try anything out in Flex, so my only Flex experience comes from this book - which when you think about it, that's pretty darn good. The book is very light on Flash player classes and how to program in Actionscript 3, but it's chock full of details on the Flex framework and how the Flex framework runs in the Flash player (quite interesting if you know Flash). Don't worry about not knowing Flash if getting this book, and actually don't even worry about knowing how to program. Most of the examples in the book are done with Flex's markup language MXML, and you rarely need to touch lots of Actionscript (though it helps!)
Head First Design Patterns
Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra
Reviewed by: Ben Gomez Farrell
This book was recommended to me by an RDAUG member, and I'm quite thankful I bought it. I've never picked up a "Head First" book, but they're written in a very unique way, with funny examples, comics, illustrations, and repetition to beat the concepts they are trying to get across into your head. Anyway, it was an excellent read, and being a programmer, Design Patterns are VERY useful to know. Some of the patterns I've been practicing for years and never knew the name for what it was, and others were great for ideas on how to approach a problem. The only downside to this book is if you're programming in Actionscript like me, since the book is written for Java. The examples are very readable to someone who knows Actionscript, but there's a few concepts that simply can't be used in Actionscript, so be careful!
Mathematics and Physics for Programmers
Danny Kodicek
Reviewed by: Ben Gomez Farrell
Wow, lotsa math here! Seriously, I think all programmers should buy this book....well, maybe theres another one where the examples were't written in Macromedia Director, but other than that, it's great. I actually am a long time user of Macromedia Director, but haven't used it for a while in favor of Flash. I found myself too lazy to read along with the coding examples, whereas I think if they were written in Javascript syntax I'd be fine. This book covers some very important topics from algebra, to trigonometry, to the physics of motion. It gets you all caught up with the stuff you forgot from high school, and then explains how to use these concepts in multimedia programming. Chapters in the book include collision testing, artificial intelligence in your games, and the basics of 3D graphics. Its a great book to browse through once, and then have it on your bookshelf when all of a sudden you need to brush up on your math, or need an idea on how to create that maze game.