Huge news, everyone! The long-awaited (by my editors) fully-updated, fully-revised, fully-correct, fully-awesome second edition of the ActionScript 3.0 Bible is finally here, after a year of hard work. Now, I don’t have a copy yet, but apparently some of my reviewers just got their copies, and I can’t wait to see what they have to say about it. More, more, more copies should be hitting shelves now or real-soon-now.
I’ve oh-so-hastily put up a rather revolting home for the book right here at http://www.actionscriptbible.com/. There are a few small parts missing right now, and it’s ugly, so bear with me.
In any case, whether you loved or hated the last edition of the Bible, I really urge you to at least give this edition a try. I’ve completely overhauled it, rewriting hundreds of pages, and adding onto it so that it’s bleeding-edge fresh for Flash Player 10.1. How fresh is this ish? This fresh, BOOM:
- Vectors: COVERED
- 3d: YES
- Pixel Bender: YOU BET
- Flash Text Engine: FER SURE
- Text Layout Framework: IN THERE
- Multitouch: SO MANY TOUCHES
- Globalization: MAIS OUI!
- Accelerometer: HELL YAH
- Color Correction: SURE!
What else? I’ve toiled to give you the best way to play with example code ever! And by toiled I mean “stood on MASH’s back!” Because every example in the book (save a few that need HTML features or looser security) uses the amazing Wonderfl service! First off, it’s never been easier to run example code. This is what an example looks like:
See, every example has a URL right next to it. This, Example 36-5, links right to http://actionscriptbible.com/ch36/ex5. So if you have the book open, just type in the URL and boom! You’re looking at the code, the example, you can download it, edit it, and best of all participate with the whole world in forking the code! No FTP to hit, no ZIP to download (though that’s still provided if you want), no software to setup… I’m really happy about this part of the book.
Get this; I’ve even put in a UMLesque table of contents, so you can find the chapter for the right class in a glance.
I know most of you readers are advanced AS3 developers and don’t need an introductory text. But if you need to get up to date with the latest Flash Player 10.1 features, or you want a good reference; if you’re coming from JavaScript or PHP or C# or Java; I shamelessly and unsurprisingly recommend my own book. Get it now at Amazon.