This is, quite simply, one of the best books I have ever read concerning the topic of Actionscript. As an Adobe Instructor in the discipline of Flash, I often find myself looking for books as suggestive reading for new learners. This book has now become my #1 choice for professionals looking to quickly learn Actionscript 3 from the ground up.

For years Colin Moock has set the standard for Actionscript learning with his Essential Guides to Actionscript. The wonderful thing about Learning Actionscript 3.0 is that it is openly and largely based on Colin Moock's titles. The benefit to choosing Learning Actionscript 3 is that Rich Shupe and Zevan Rosser realized the advanced technical nature of Colin Moock's titles. They also realized how potentially difficult this may be for professionals with no prior experience. It was through this realization that they delivered a book that was as thorough in coverage as Moock's but as easy to read as Harry Potter!

I pre-ordered this book before it was even out in the bookstores about 7 months ago. I was an intermediate ActionScript 2 developer before making the jump to ActionScript 3. What a difference in the language, but most importantly the book makes light of all of that in way thats very easy to understand. Its the perfect book for a beginner, it teaches you a lot of procedural programming but also wraps everything you do nicely into Object Oriented Programming. Its not overwhelming by any means, I have already recommended this book to all of my friends! There is also a great companion website for the book and the authors tend to reply to comments that you make on the site. Ive read the book straight through 3 times already, its by far my favorite book for Flash. And it's really unlike other beginner books, its on an island of its own. This is how all newbie books should be written!

Learning Actionscript 3.0 is just what the doctor ordered for people looking to start at ground zero with actionscript 3.0. I also purchased "Essential Actionscript" and "Actionscript 3.0 Cookbook". Both are very good reference books but I was a bit lost being an extreme nuubie.
Learning Actionscript 3.0 really helped me "UNDERSTAND" the basics on how to set things up and how and why things do what they do.

I consider this an essential purchase if your just picking up actionscript 3.0.

This book is well written, uses understandable examples, and is quite easy to work through. If you're new to Actionscript, or if you're a carryover from 2.0, this book is well worth the time and money.

BUY THIS BOOK
Even if you already own a more advanced or more confusing book
THIS is the book to pick up to learn Action script
Its is very well layed out with nice color images
With very clear explanations of concepts
The Companion website is a really great resource too
If you want to learn Action script (or teach it) this is one of the books you need on your shelf
I simply cannot recommend it highly enough

It's the best book available for learning AS3 if you're a raw beginner like I am. I've been struggling, but this is the only book that provided me with explanations I could understand, plus all the fla files are provided, and that is a tremendous help. I have tried the other learning sources, including the lessons on [...], and this book helped me the most.

I haven't get to the end yet, but until now, I love this book, is really nice to read, the authors can explain complex matters so easily and just bring a big light over aspects that where dark to me before this book.

I am being able to understand so clearly the new concepts of actionScript 3.0 and use what they teach in real life projects.

If you want to learn easily, then this is your book.

This is the opinion of a graphic designer who has been just playing with actionScript 2.0 for long time, but never was able to understand clearly the Class concept, now, after this book I can, and I have to :)

Great teachers are the authors, thank you Rich Shupe and Zevan Rosser!

I subscribe to [...] which is one of the best investments I have ever made. They have video tutorials on all sorts of software and subjects, among other things ActionScript 3.

I find the book "Learning ActionScript 3.0: A beginner's guide" to be an excellent complement to the Lynda videos. The book covers some basic AS concepts such as loops and conditional statements and progresses into Classes etc. It covers video, audio and the stuff that you need to get started with AS3.

The only bad thing is that there are some minor errors in the code, but there is a accompanying website that gives you the corrections. It is hard to let go of the book and it joins me to bed, to my girlfriend's dismay.

This is probably close to the best book on Actionscript 3.0 I've come across and although I'm relatively new to Actionscript in general, it has helped me tremendously. It's well organised, well explained and has coloured code examples which really makes sense. I'd say beginners with a little knowledge would find this book invaluable, and even the pros could learn a thing or two. I'm a tough critic and 4 stars is a great score from me :)

First, please note that many of the 5-star reviews are written by experienced Flash professionals, who already have actionscript expertise -- and that makes them poor judges of how clear this book will be to a beginning audience.

The book is explicitly written for beginners, but the authors often have a poor grasp on what readers know. On one page they start talking about "trapping" events. What does that mean? Who knows?

I have a good math background, so I was able to decipher the math chapter, but it contains explanations like, "A radian is the angle of a circle subtended by an arc along its circumference that is the length of the circle's radius (hence the name, radian)." What's the point of writing a sentence like that? Will it be understood by anyone who doesn't already know what a radian is? Has a math newbie even ever heard the word "subtend"? This casual use of undefined jargon happens in every chapter.

Also, sometimes they're just wrong. They say that a ball moving 4 pixels to the right and 4 pixels down per second will have a velocity of 4 pixels per second in a south southeast direction. No. The Pythagorean theorem (which they explain, badly, in the next section), says the ball will be moving more than 5.6 pixels per second. And the direction is southeast.

The book really is full of typos, and they're not all caught in the errata. The only way to know if the code is correct is to to go the website and download the code being discussed in the book. The files you download will have the correct code (though before you check the code, as you're reading the book you're thinking, "Do I not understand, or is this code wrong?") Unfortunately, the book sometimes refers to these files by the wrong name, so you have to figure out which file to open. That's really inexcusable -- how hard would it be for the authors to go to their own website and correctly name the files?

Another random, infuriating example of the book's sloppiness: on page 144, the authors state a line of code "g.curveTo(275, 0, 400, 100);". In the context of the chapter, the hardest part of this code to understand is the "275, 0" and it's the one part they don't bother to explain!

And as long as I'm ranting (I just threw the book down to come and write this), the authors often put unnecessary lines into the code. I'm left trying to figure it out, wondering, "Why did they put that there? Is it necessary?" so I try the code without the extra material, and it still works fine. But the authors never explain why it's there, so while you're trying to learn to read actionscript, wanting to understand the importance of each line and its relationship to the rest of the example, you're thinking, "Am I just missing the importance of this line? Or does it have no importance?" Learners shouldn't be left to wonder those things!

It's a maddening book, full of unexplained terminology (I just found the phrase, "dedicated canvas"; huh?), incomplete explanations, bloated code, and many, many errors.

First, please note that many of the 5-star reviews are written by experienced Flash professionals, who already have actionscript expertise -- and that makes them poor judges of how clear this book will be to a beginning audience.

The book is explicitly written for beginners, but the authors often have a poor grasp on what readers know. On one page they start talking about "trapping" events. What does that mean? Who knows?

I have a good math background, so I was able to decipher the math chapter, but it contains explanations like, "A radian is the angle of a circle subtended by an arc along its circumference that is the length of the circle's radius (hence the name, radian)." What's the point of writing a sentence like that? Will it be understood by anyone who doesn't already know what a radian is? Has a math newbie even ever heard the word "subtend"? This casual use of undefined jargon happens in every chapter.

Also, sometimes they're just wrong. They say that a ball moving 4 pixels to the right and 4 pixels down per second will have a velocity of 4 pixels per second in a south southeast direction. No. The Pythagorean theorem (which they explain, badly, in the next section), says the ball will be moving more than 5.6 pixels per second. And the direction is southeast.

The book really is full of typos, and they're not all caught in the errata. It's necessary to go the website and download the code being discussed in the book. The files you download will have the correct code (though before you check the code, as you're reading the book you're thinking, "Do I not understand, or is this code wrong?") Unfortunately, the book sometimes refers to these files by the wrong name, so you have to figure out which file to open. That's really inexcusable -- how hard would it be for the authors to go to their own website and correctly name the files?

Another random, infuriating example of the book's sloppiness: on page 144, the authors state a line of code "g.curveTo(275, 0, 400, 100);". In the context of the chapter, the hardest part of this code to understand is the "275, 0" and it's the one part they don't bother to explain!

And as long as I'm ranting (I just threw the book down to come and write this), the authors often put unnecessary lines into the code. I'm left trying to figure it out, wondering, "Why did they put that there? Is it necessary?" so I try the code without the extra material, and it still works fine. But the authors never explain why it's there, so while you're trying to learn to read actionscript, wanting to understand the importance of each line and its relationship to the rest of the example, you're thinking, "Am I just missing the importance of this line? Or does it have no importance?" Learners shouldn't be left to wonder those things!

It's a maddening book, full of unexplained terminology (I just found the phrase, "dedicated canvas"; huh?), incomplete explanations, bloated code, and many, many errors.

First, please note that many of the 5-star reviews are written by experience Flash professionals, who already have experience with actionscript concepts -- and that makes them poor judges of how clear this book will be to a beginning audience.

The book is explicitly written for beginners, but the authors don't always have a good grasp on what readers know. On one page they start talking about "trapping" events. What does that mean? Who knows?

Elsewhere, in a discussion of "properties" they throw in the term "elements." Are these terms synonymous or different?

They write, "all three results could potentially execute" when they mean, "any one of the three results could potentially execute."

They start throwing around the terms "parent" and "child" without defining them.

It gets better as you go along, but it's pretty rough going, especially at the beginning. These expert authors should have had a complete novice review their book for language and clarity.

The book is explicitly written for beginners, but the authors don't always have a good grasp on what readers know. On one page they start talking about "trapping" events. What does that mean? Who knows?

Elsewhere, in a discussion of "properties" they throw in the term "elements." Are these terms synonymous or different?

They write, "all three results could potentially execute" when they mean, "any one of the three results could potentially execute."

They start throwing around the terms "parent" and "child" without defining them.

It gets better as you go along, but it's pretty rough going, especially at the beginning. These expert authors should have had a complete novice review their book for language and clarity.

After reading the other reviews I decided to give this book a try and I don't regret it.

I'm surprised a book by O'Reilly was released with this many typos. I've been going through it and typing the tutorials that were new material for me. The amount of mistakes is just unacceptable, especially that many times it happens in code. The code is correct in the examples from their web site which begs the question, why didn't they just cut and paste it from the WORKING examples? The errata on their web site has a few of the mistakes but I've found many more.

Anyway, apart from the ridiculous number of typos it is a pretty good book. I don't think its the be-all Flash book like some people on here that have been raving, but it is a good stepping stone book to learning some OOP. Its very practical and eases you from timeline code into classes. Most Flash books seem to go all timeline or all OOP, so good job to them for understanding their audience. Another knock I have is that in many examples they try to show you additional techniques apart from the main thing they are trying to illustrate. Normally I would applaud this because you just learn more, but too often here it just confuses. My last issue with the book is that it sometimes fails to explain an important element of code or give you a really vague explanation, even if that is the purpose of the exercise! Personally I want to know why I'm typing every line in so I can be more flexible when I write my own code, as opposed to blindly memorizing and hoping I remember it when I need it.

All in all, you won't go wrong with this one, but it is by no means perfect. It could've been great. Its not. But its still good and worth a purchase.

I'm surprised a book by O'Reilly was released with this many typos. I've been going through it and typing the tutorials that were new material for me. The amount of mistakes is just unacceptable, especially that many times it happens in code. The code is correct in the examples from their web site which begs the question, why didn't they just cut and paste it from the WORKING examples? The errata on their web site has a few of the mistakes but I've found many more.

Anyway, apart from the ridiculous number of typos it is a pretty good book. I don't think its the be-all Flash book like some people on here that have been raving, but it is a good stepping stone book to learning some OOP. Its very practical and eases you from timeline code into classes. Most Flash books seem to go all timeline or all OOP, so good job to them for understanding their audience. One other knock I do have is that in many examples they try to show you additional techniques apart from the main thing they are trying to illustrate. Normally I would applaud this because you just learn more, but too often here it just confuses.

All in all, you won't go wrong with this one, but it is by no means perfect. It could've been great. Its not. But its still really good.

Any computer library strong in web development titles in general and ActionScript in particular will want the beginner's guide to Flash, LEARNING ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0. It's an excellent introduction which also lends well to classroom use and assignment, covering all the basics of how ActionScript and Flash work and surveying logic, content, transferring projects to ActionScript, waveform visualization, loading HTML and more. Chapters offer hands-on exercises to reinforce skills building learning and also pair well with a companion web site offering material for all the exercises plus test quizzes. ActionScript learners will find it an essential - and surprisingly easy - reference.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I'm plugging away with Learning ActionScript because I can see how it's capable of amazing things, and I have been using Flash for a little while.
However this book is written using the kind of language that seems simple to a programmer and obscure to the rest of us - a lot of what is written I simply can't fathom despite frequent re-reading (I'm afraid this probably says more about me than the writers of the book). It's probably best for those who are more familiar with the composition of scripts and want to upgrade to ActionScript 3. Not really a beginners guide.

I purchased this book after having gone through Todd Perkins' "ActionScript 3.0". This book was much better. Easy explanations and an all around easier read. The book is divided into VI sections with a total of 15 chapters.

Section I-Getting Started
AS overview
Core language fundamentals

Section II-Graphics and Interactions
Properties, Methods, and Events
The Display List
Timeline Control
OOP (Object Oriented Programming)
Motion
Drawing with Vectors
Drawing with Pixels

Section III-Text
Text

Section IV-Sound & Video
Sound
Video

Section V-Input/Output
Loading Assets
XML and E4X

Section VI-Programming Design and Resources
Programming Design and Resources

This book is great at explaining ActionScript usage within the timeline. I found something to be desired in the code examples in the Sound section. It could have used a few more well-rounded code exerpts. Hopefully, that will change with the next edition.

I recommend this book.

This book is arguably the best on the market for balancing rigorous treatment of ActionScript programming concepts with useful applications. The book is written with a bias toward designers, and is really about using ActionScript to write projects with sound, animation, and interactivity. It certainly provides enough information to produce amusing toys for websites.

The book is one part cookbook, one part beginner's programming reference. The author supplies a lot of information and really does a fine job of teaching the concepts, but the presentation is severely flawed. The author exerts a lot of time and effort developing object-oriented classes for cars and trucks. This leads to discussions of how to program various animations, vector shapes, gradient fills, a color picker, and much more. The trouble is, he never combines these two separate threads into a cohesive project so that we can see how all these ideas fit together to produce a finished product. The OOP example sort of ends, and the author moves on to other topics. Therefore, though the book is good and useful, probably the best of its kind, I can still only give it four stars.

Very clear writing that makes difficult concepts easier to understand. The content is presented in a logical, straightforward manner that provides the beginning (although not novice) ActionScript developer with what I feel is a solid base on which to build. I've looked at a number of other books that seriously lacked instruction in the fundamentals, but this book doesn't leave out any of the basics. It should be noted, however, that you should have at least a cursory understanding of what variables are, and how functions and loops are written. The only other caveat I could offer is that the source files from the website are already written with complete scripts, and the authors do not spend any time on step by step exercises. The scripting process is explained in detail, but some readers (like me) will find themselves wanting more of a tutorial oriented format. Those readers will benefit from pairing this book with either a class, or a training DVD such as AS3 Essentials from Total Training.

This book is great for learning actionscript 3.0 from zero, or for designers coming from the actionscript 2.0 world. Not only the concepts are well explained in a logical order with practical everyday examples, but also there are many tips for people coming from previous AS versions such as the Stage/stage/root confusions.

It may have less information than other books, but it gives you a general perspective on how things work. I would recommend this book before starting with the more hard coder oriented Essential ActionScript 3.0 (Essential) (Essential)

'Learning ActionScript 3.0: A Beginner's Guide' really fills a niche in the ActionScript book market becoming one of the defacto standards for learning this great language. ActionScript has really grown the last couple of years and while there are some books on the market, there hasn't been a great learning tool for new or light developers on how to create good stuff quickly and with less effort. This full color 350+ page book covering 15 chapters of material will you get you up and running, ready to make great ActionScript projects asap.

If you need to learn ActionScript from the ground up or want to improve your skill set, you owe it to yourself to pick up this book. From the basics of using basic programming structures to learning to work with Flash seamlessly, this is simply an outstanding book cover to cover.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This book is a perfect fit to your designer/developer library. The authors review the important foundations with clear examples. What clearly makes this a standout in the pack is the author's ability to give a clear introduction that would fit both the developer and the design audience. The book is in full color with full code coloring, which is fantastic to see. The accompanying site is also a great help with further explorations and support of the text. If you would like a clear understanding of the fundamentals of ActionScript 3 this is the choice. The book would also make a great text for classroom instruction.

This book was recommended to me by an instructor in a Flash class- and I have to say it was an excellent recommendation. As a designer new to AS and prgramming, things were a little confusing, but this book breaks info down into a non-intimidating format. My experience has been that finding good resources to start the learning prcess for AS3 is difficult, but you'll find a good start here. I'd say that this book spans a beginning to intermediate range and gives a good foundation for further learning.

As a side note, the companion website is excellent, and the authors respond very quickly to inquiries. If you want to learn AS3, and are not sure where to start, this book will get you going in the right direction.

Finally a book on ActionScript that is clear, crisply written and easy to follow. This is the book I've been looking for and couldn't find. I finally get it! I've never felt compelled to write a review before, but felt I should take the time after purchasing this book.

I'm a designer who has been trying to learn ActionScript for quite a while. I have a stack of books, but this one is just so much better than anything I've come across. I've often wondered why it has to be so hard. These guys know to write and how to teach. It's all very clear.

One of the things I really appreciate about the book is that it is in color. That in itself makes it so much easier to get into and understand. As a visual person it makes a huge difference.

The subtitle is "A Beginners Guide" but it is by no means a simple introduction. It is very thorough and covers most of the concepts you will likely ever use. The examples are all very useful and the example code is available for download from their equally well designed website, which also includes additional examples not in the book.

They really do an incredible job of showing how everything works together and they do it with economy. No unnecessary words and nothing necessary forgotten.

It even make the trigonometry seem easy. Amazing. Not an easy task.

If you're a designer or new to ActionScript 3.0, I think this is the best there is. If you combine this with the Actionscript Cookbook, and Moock's Essential Actionscript for reference (after you have completed reading and understanding "Learning Actionscript 3.0") I think you'll have everything you need to solve any ActionScript problem.

I am a designer who has read so many books on actionscript, I started dreaming about code in my sleep. What can I say, I'm a designer....I'm visual... Didn't matter how many books I read on the subject....."I didn't really get it". Until this book came along....
This book also made me understand all the other books even more.
Worth having a look at!
And also I must add, my other recommendation is the Actionscript 3 Bible -Colin Moocks "Essential Actionscript 3" This book goes more into detail, where the other book skims across the surface. Colin is the Actionscript master.

I think I have been waiting for this book all of my life.

I am a designer who has read so many books on actionscript, I started dreaming about code in my sleep. What can I say, I'm a designer....I'm visual... Didn't matter how many books I read on the subject....."I didn't really get it". Until this book came along.....all I can say is thank god!
This book also made me understand all the other books even more.
Just buy it!
And also buy Colin Moocks "Essential Actionscript 3" it's all you will need. With these two books, you're well on your way to greatness!