graphics and multimedia

This is a very useful book in my opinion. What's especially helpful is the author literally breaks-down his code, line-by-line, so that the reader clearly understands what is going on. It's a great method for teaching programming - particularly for the beginning programmer, yet also contains some very nifty stuff that even hardcore veterans of the interactive world can find useful.

The games are cute, yet very cool and adpatable. It shows good faith that the author even offers his games up for use by readers of the book. But to just borrow his code and replace his graphics with your own is to miss the real gem of this book, which is to instruct in the power and ease of Flash MX ActionScript. In just two weeks my working-knowledge of ActionScript has grown considerably.

Many computer-how-to books on the market teach by using generic examples, but there is nothing generic about the working prototypes presented in this book. There is some pretty impressive stuff here with some particularly well done graphics and animation. It feels more like the reader is learning on "real-world" examples rather than tired old stock-in-trade tutorials.

Buy (and read) this wonderful book and I guarantee that your Flash movies will improve considerably and in no time you'll be making some pretty impressive Interactive media. I am a professional animator and webmaster, but I always needed programmers who knew Java, C, or C++ to make the really cool stuff in the past. With the help of this book by Gary Rosenweig, those days are past history!

Don't let the title fool you... this is a serious action-scripting book, specifically targeted for Flash-based games. You won't find any XML, Cold Fusion Integration, Database integration, etc., but that's not the scope of this book. If you want to learn how to use Flash ActionScript to manipulate movie clips, the Flash timeline, respond to user interaction, and create many different types of cool games that you see a lot on the internet, this book is for you. It is NOT a Flash book... it is an ActionScript book. The author assumes you are already competent with Flash basics. (I should also mention that you WILL learn a lot about Flash organizational skills as you work through the book.)

The STRENGTH of this book is that it uses the entire book to concentrate on one subject, vs. other Flash books that try to be "everything to everyone" without ever going into enough detail on any one subject. This is similar to another excellent Flash book, "Flash Cartooning" by Mark Clarkson, which spends the whole book on simply just learning how to animate in Flash.

I liked the book. The beginning chapters are broken down into very short lessons that teach you the fundamentals of game programming. The latter chapters focus on complete games built upon the techniques taught previously. I was able to get started quickly since the book does a fine job of presenting the material.