Paperback: 622 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.36 x 9.16 x 7.36

Publisher: New Riders; (November 26, 2003)

ISBN: 0735713820

In one word, “Wow”! If you have any sort of questions or want to do dynamic Flash, you NEED this book. Nate covers everything from XML, LoadVars, Flash Remoting and Web Services, if it is in Flash, it is in this book.

The first few chapters of the book focus on getting acquainted with the User Interface (UI) and learning the basics of Flash. Although this doesn’t sound like much, the first three chapters comprise of over 110 pages. Chapter 4 is an introduction to ActionScript which is about 65 pages, so even if this is your first exposure to Flash, you will be able to grasp the basics of Flash and ActionScript. This book is targeted at existing web developers with a background in ColdFusion, ASP.NET or Java. Throughout this book you will be introduced to the basics of Flash and learn ActionScript 2.0 (AS 2.0), Flash’s new Object-Oriented Programming language.

In a word, this book is brilliant. On my shelf I have about 15 books on Flash, ActionScript and every conceivable combination of the two. This is the only book that really targets Web programmers and pulls it off. This book teaches you how to create your own custom classes using AS 2.0, handle events generated by Flash (such as when a MovieClip has finished loading, or if a MovieClip has received data), how to build a dynamic scrolling image gallery, build a comment “widget”, using Flash’s new XPathAPI, to building a couple examples with Flash Remoting. This book covers it all, although, naturally can’t go in to extreme detail on every topic.

I had one minor problem getting a particular example in this book to work (although it was completely my fault for not reading closely enough) and it was very nice to actually have Nate reply to my email, and within 15 minutes no less! You can get more info about Nate’s book at http://flashforservergeeks.com/.

This book isn’t perfect, but comes about as close as you can get. Personally I think that the book needs more screenshots as sometimes you can go through about half a chapter without any screenshots of what you’re building, in other places you may have 12 consecutive pages of code. The other minor gripe I had with this book (and is in no way Nate’s fault) was the template. In some places the layout seems really awkward as if the text is going to run right off the page.