This review is half for ASDG1 and ASDG2. I bought ASDG1 a while back; after having read reviews online, I decided that it was the best book for my money, and also the likeliest to teach a non-programmer how to dive into Actionscript. I also was a frequenter of Colin's site (moock.org) and knew that he knew his stuff!
ASDG1 taught me not only Actionscript for Flash 5 but how to approach problems from a programmer's position. After having read the book cover-to-cover (okay, so I didn't read the whole language reference) I was able to tackle PHP with almost no difficulty. Colin's ability to teach programming thru prose is astounding, I had no trouble tackling the concepts presented in the book. If only as a programming primer this either edition of this book is excellent!
The language reference is something that no Flash programmer should be without, spanning 500+ pages it coveres in depth all of the material in the non-updated Flash help/documentation, correcting and bringing to light things that were not mentioned.
I only recently received my copy of ASDG2 and and extremely pleased with it. It covers many of the newly added features present in Flash 6 (communication server and other related technologies are not covered), such as the drawing API, the enhanced event model and refinements to existing objects.
Building off all the strengths present in ASDG1 and going beyond, ASDG2 is the best way to learn the ropes of the ActionScript language. Instead of learning how to make movieclips or just a bunch of canned tricks, ASDG teaches you how to program inside of Actionscript, building each level on previous chapters.
Definately worth picking up if you want to get started programming for the web or just want to make your flash movies more powerful and interactive.
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