I selected this book as a primer and was exceedingly satisfied. It was just the right mix of information and samples to leverage a basic understanding of ActionScript into the programming concepts I bring to the table from my background in OOP and Procedural programming techniques. My familiarity with JavaScript was also helpful in that ActionScript shares many operators and programming constructs with JavaScript.
By the time I reached chapter 12 where there is a serious flaw in the sample code (a second class in nested inside the constructor class) I was able to quickly figure out what the problem was and rewrite the code so that the sample worked properly. For this I used what I had already learned from this book, the Flash CS3 help file and the Flash error message to localize information and correct the issue. Whether this was introduced on purpose or not it does provide a nice little test for the student to see how well they are doing.
For me this was the perfect starter book but Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3.0 are very rich programming environments and further study is needed.
Currently I’m in the middle of Learning ActionScript 3.0, The Non-Programmer's Guide to ActionScript 3.0, By Rich Shupe, Zevan Rosser, which is proving to be a good follow up.
After that I’ll tackle ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns, Object Oriented Programming Techniques, By William B. Sanders, Chandima Cumaranatunge and round things out with ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook, Solutions for Flash Platform and Flex Application Developers, By Joey Lott, Darron Schall, Keith Peters.
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