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.
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!).
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