Foundation ActionScript for Flash 8

By Kristian Besley, Sham Bhangal, Eric Dolecki, David Powers

You can view the 'Future Media' site, as built during the book's case study, right here.

ActionScript is the native scripting language of Flash. ActionScript knowledge is essential within the world of Flash design and development, as Flash remains a leading tool for cutting-edge interactive design and development.

ActionScript is what gives Flash its power, but with that power comes a certain level of complexity, which can be intimidating. This beginners book, significantly updated since the last edition, covers all of the basics of ActionScript using the latest version of Flash, Flash 8. The skills acquired by working through this book will enable you to move on to more advanced friends of ED books such as Foundation PHP 5 for Flash, Foundation ActionScript Animation or Foundation XML for Flash.

This book contains all you need to understand and make use of ActionScript, and to have some fun while learning. The Foundation series teaching style is ideal if you’re a non-programmer who wants to learn Flash programming quickly and thoroughly. The authors teach the basics, and provide you an all-around proficiency in ActionScript, as well as Flash components within Flash 8. You’ll gain the practical skills to build ActionScript based Flash projects, including making initial design decisions, structuring code, and testing. An ongoing case study means that by the end of the book, you’ll have constructed a cutting-edge Flash site to showcase your newly learned skills.
Summary of Contents:

• Chapter 1 Interactive Flash
• Chapter 2 Making Plans
• Chapter 3 Movies That Remember
• Chapter 4 Movies That Decide for Themselves
• Chapter 5 More Power, Less Script
• Chapter 6 Movies That Remember How to Do Things
• Chapter 7 Objects and Classes
• Chapter 8 Objects on the Stage
• Chapter 9 Reusable Code and Realistic Movement
• Chapter 10 Games and Sprites
• Chapter 11 Drawing API
• Chapter 12 Adding Sound to Flash
• Chapter 13 Loading Dynamic Data with XML
• Chapter 14 Finishing the Futuremedia Case Study
• Chapter 15 Advanced ActionScript: Components and Classes

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.