Learning ActionScript 3.0: A Beginner's Guide

by Rich Shupe, Zevan Rosser

Overview

If you're new to ActionScript 3.0, or want to enhance your skill set, this bestselling book is the ideal guide. Designers, developers, and programmers alike will find Learning ActionScript 3.0 invaluable for navigating ActionScript 3.0's learning curve. You'll learn the language by getting a clear look at essential topics such as logic, event handling, displaying content, classes, and much more.

Updated for Flash Professional CS5, this revised and expanded edition delivers hands-on exercises and full-color code samples to help you increase your abilities as you progress through the book. Topics are introduced with basic syntax and class-based examples, so you can set your own pace for learning object-oriented programming.

• Harness the power and performance of ActionScript 3.0
• Control sound and video, including new access to microphone data
• Create art with code by drawing vectors and pixels at runtime
• Manipulate text with unprecedented typographic control
• Animate graphics, create particle systems, and apply simple physics
• Avoid common coding mistakes and reuse code for improved productivity
• Load SWF, image, text, HTML, CSS, and XML file formats, and more

Authors Rich Shupe and Zevan Rosser draw on their experience as Flash developers and instructors to give you a solid ActionScript foundation, revealing ways you can use code for practical, everyday projects.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781449390174
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	11/01/2010
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	433
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Rich Shupe has been teaching ActionScript programming to students of all levels since the language became available. He founded his own training and development company, FMA, in 1995. A recognized authority on several technologies, including Flash, Director and QuickTime, Rich is a full-time faculty member in the Computer Art Department at New York's School of Visual Arts. Learning ActionScript 3.0 has been called "the best book on ActionScript ever written," by evangelist and Flash community leader Lee Brimelow.

Zevan Rosser is a freelance designer/programmer/consultant and computer artist. He teaches ActionScript and Flash animation at New York's School of Visual Arts and FMA. When he's not working on commercial projects he works on his personal site, http://www.shapevent.com.

Table of Contents

Preface; Who This Book Is For; How This Book Is Organized; What Is—and Isn't—In This Book; Companion Website; Typographical Conventions Used In This Book; Using Code Examples; We'd Like To Hear From You; Acknowledgments; About the Authors; Colophon; Getting Started; Chapter 1: What Is ActionScript?; 1.1 What's New in ActionScript 3.0?; 1.2 The Flash Platform; 1.3 Procedural Versus Object-Oriented Programming; 1.4 The Document Class; 1.5 Legacy Code Compatibility; 1.6 Hello World; 1.7 What's Next?; Chapter 2: Core Language Fundamentals; 2.1 Jump Right In; 2.2 Miscellaneous Basics; 2.3 Variables and Data Types; 2.4 Operators; 2.5 Conditionals; 2.6 Loops; 2.7 Arrays; 2.8 Vectors; 2.9 Functions; 2.10 Custom Objects; 2.11 this and parent; 2.12 Absolute Versus Relative Addresses; 2.13 Put It All Together; 2.14 What's Next?; Graphics and Interaction; Chapter 3: Properties, Methods, and Events; 3.1 Jump Right In; 3.2 Properties; 3.3 Events; 3.4 Methods; 3.5 Event Propagation; 3.6 Frame and Timer Events; 3.7 Removing Event Listeners; 3.8 What's Next?; Chapter 4: The Display List; 4.1 Jump Right In; 4.2 The Sum of Its Parts; 4.3 Adding and Removing Children; 4.4 Managing Object Names, Positions, and Data Types; 4.5 Changing the Display List Hierarchy; 4.6 A Dynamic Navigation Bar; 4.7 What's Next?; Chapter 5: Timeline Control; 5.1 Jump Right In; 5.2 Playhead Movement; 5.3 Frame Labels; 5.4 Frame Rate; 5.5 A Simple Site or Application Structure; 5.6 What's Next?; Chapter 6: OOP; 6.1 Classes; 6.2 Inheritance; 6.3 Composition; 6.4 Encapsulation; 6.5 Polymorphism; 6.6 Navigation Bar Revisited; 6.7 What's Next?; Chapter 7: Motion; 7.1 Basic Movement; 7.2 Simple Physics; 7.3 A Basic Particle System; 7.4 Simple Collision Detection; 7.5 Geometry and Trigonometry; 7.6 Programmatic Tweening; 7.7 What's Next?; Chapter 8: Drawing with Vectors; 8.1 The Graphics Class; 8.2 The Geometry Package; 8.3 9-Slice Scaling; 8.4 Applied Examples; 8.5 What's Next?; Chapter 9: Drawing with Pixels; 9.1 Bitmap Caching; 9.2 The BitmapData Class; 9.3 Blend Modes; 9.4 Bitmap Filters; 9.5 Color Effects; 9.6 Image Encoding and Saving; 9.7 Adding Functionality to Your Color Picker; 9.8 What's Next?; Text; Chapter 10: Text; 10.1 Creating Text Fields; 10.2 Setting Text Field Attributes; 10.3 Selecting Text; 10.4 Formatting Text; 10.5 Formatting with HTML and CSS; 10.6 Triggering ActionScript from HTML Links; 10.7 Loading HTML and CSS; 10.8 Text Layout Framework; 10.9 What's Next?; Sound and Video; Chapter 11: Sound; 11.1 ActionScript Sound Architecture; 11.2 Internal and External Sounds; 11.3 Playing, Stopping, and Pausing Sounds; 11.4 Buffering Sounds; 11.5 Changing Sound Volume and Pan; 11.6 Reading ID3 Metadata from MP3 Sounds; 11.7 Visualizing Sound Data; 11.8 Visualizing Microphone Input; 11.9 Recording, Playing, and Saving Microphone Input; 11.10 What's Next?; Chapter 12: Video; 12.1 Encoding; 12.2 Components; 12.3 Full-Screen Video; 12.4 Captions; 12.5 Writing Your Own Player; 12.6 What's Next?; Input/Output; Chapter 13: Loading Assets; 13.1 Loading SWFs and Images; 13.2 Loading Data; 13.3 Communicating with Loaded SWFs; 13.4 Additional Online Resources; 13.5 What's Next?; Chapter 14: XML; 14.1 Understanding XML Structure; 14.2 Creating an XML Object; 14.3 Using Variables in XML; 14.4 Reading XML; 14.5 Writing XML; 14.6 Deleting XML; 14.7 Loading External XML Documents; 14.8 Sending to and Loading from a Server; 14.9 An XML-Based Navigation System; 14.10 What's Next?;