Many Flash developers are self taught. Sometimes they become developers after pushing the design envelope and crossing over into programming. Others have a background in another language and come to Flash to apply their art in a new medium.

The problem for the first group is that most Flash books and resources on the web (including this one) show examples with very procedural code. It often confuses the issue when you're trying to demonstrate a very specific feature in Flash when you have to break things out into class structures. So, when writers want to show say… how parse XML or calculate leap year, they usually show it in very procedural terms.

Going from being a procedural coder to an object-oriented programmer can be a big leap. But it shouldn't have to be. The theory behind OOP can be scary and dogmatic at first. Most books on the subject are confusing. If you don't understand something in the first few chapters, you'll be lost to the end of the book.

So, when friends of Ed announced that they were going to be releasing a book called "Object-Oriented ActionScript for Flash 8" I was very interested to check it out. The book is written by Peter Elst (peterelst.com) and Todd Yard (27bobs.com) with contributions from Sas Jacobs and William Drol.

This is another great book from friends of Ed. It fits into a glaring and previously empty niche in the landscape of ActionScript publications. Like other friends of Ed books, it's written in plain language that anyone can understand.

With that said, you should have a very solid footing in the basic syntax and usage of ActionScript before jumping into any OOP book. This book doesn't waste much time explaining how to write basic script. The first third of the book covers some simple theory that explains the purpose for OOP and how to plan out your project. But once the theory is over, the programming is fast and furious.

I think the best way to describe the book is "practical". It's not 500 pages of dogma passed down from people in the ivory tower. It's basically two of the best ActionScript developers in the business showing how they approach problems that we all come across every day.

It's practical as a great overview of OOP theory, design patterns, component architecture, etc. But it also offers some other great little gems along the way. They show you in a few pages (if that many) how to quickly and easily set up source control on your development box (something I hadn't done until reading this book), how to consume web services, create animation with ActionScript and much more.

In the process of learning OOP, this book will also give you a wickedly good understanding of Flash's component architecture. They don't actually walk you through the Macromedia architecture; they walk you through building your own component architecture from scratch. But the architecture they create is very similar to the v2 architecture used in Flash components.

Overall, this is a great book. If you've tried to read Essential ActionScript 2.0 and had trouble with it, this book provides an alternate and very approachable introduction to the subject. Even if you have a good handle on OOP in Flash, this book is a fantastic look into how other high-end developers work in Flash and will give you a very intimate understanding of component framework and architecture.

Object-Oriented ActionScript for Flash 8
Author:	Peter Elst, Todd Yard
Pages:	560
Publisher:	friends of ED
ISBN:	1590596196
Rating:	9 out of 10

This book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Nobel (not affiliate links).