Foundation ActionScript for Flash MX

By Sham Bhangal, Ben Renow-Clarke

With the release of Flash MX, scripting in Flash has moved from being a desirable asset to an essential skill in the world of web design. ActionScript is, quite simply, the center of power in Flash, and it's no surprise that most of the advances in Flash MX are Script-centric.

Flash is a design tool, and ActionScript can easily scare designers. This book is for anyone who has ever looked in awe at a cutting-edge Flash site, then taken a look at some code, and run in the other direction. Learning ActionScript with friends of ED will not turn you into a boring programmer, it will turn you into someone who finally has the power to achieve what they want with their web design.

This book will take you from knowing nothing about ActionScript to a firm knowledge that will allow you to exercise a previously unimaginable amount of power over your flash movies. It does this with fully worked examples throughout, and a case study that will leave you with a cutting-edge Flash site by the end of the book.

See the final stun:design site here

The book assumes no previous knowledge of code or ActionScript, but does assume that you know the basics of the Flash interface, and have maybe created some basic timeline-based movies with tweens and so on. (If you're totally new to Flash, then you might want to take a look at friends of ED's acclaimed Foundation Flash MX, or at the more visually orientated Flash MX Express.)

This is no simple re-write of the first edition of Foundation ActionScript - with the help of friends of ED Flash guru Sham Bhangal, Foundation ActionScript has been re-structured and re-written to reflect the major changes in ActionScript bought about with Flash MX (just compare the table of contents if you don't believe us!).

Table of Contents

1. Interactive Flash
2. Movies that remember
3. Movies that decide for themselves
4. More power, less script
5. Movies that remember how to do things
6. Getting organized
7. Objects on the stage
8. Making plans
9. Modular ActionScript
10. Sound
11. Sprites
12. Drawing API
13 Coding the stun:design site

This book is part of friends of ED's 'Foundation' series

The Foundation series is perfect for beginners to a technology, because it doesn't assume any previous knowledge. Each book in the series takes you step by step through your chosen technology, starting with the absolute fundamentals and working through all aspects of the technology, ultimately providing you with a firm grasp of the basics that will enable you to create your own applications or web sites. You will learn by following complete examples at every stage of your journey, often by extended case studies that you will build upon throughout the book. The Foundation series will give you the broad and solid base you need in order to progress to a higher level of expertise.