Resources at Learning ActionScript 3.0

Note: We are guaranteed to have unintentionally overlooked valuable resources in this list—confined both by time of printing and limited space. Please check the companion web site for more information and send in any resources you enjoy.

Blogs

There are many dozens of blogs that add to the published material about Flash and ActionScript. What follows is a small list of some of the best resources of the blogging community, preceded by aggregators that monitor many, many blogs collecting posts on related topics.

Aggregators

Blogs

Forums

Here is a trio of community forums, preceded by a collection of ActionScript 3.0 tips by the always-fabulous Senocular, and hosted by the Kirupa forum.

Books

At the time this book was published, there was a growing number of books published or scheduled that focus on ActionScript 3.0. Here is a handful.

ActionScript 3.0 Bible—Roger Braunstein, Mims H. Wright, and Joshua J. Noble (Wiley)
ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook—Joey Lott, Darren Schall, Keith Peters (O’Reilly)
ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns: Object Oriented Programming Techniques—William Sanders and Chandima Cumaranatunge (O’Reilly)
Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns—Joey Lott and Danny Patterson (Adobe Press)
Foundation ActionScript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move!—Keith Peters (Friends of ED)
Essential ActionScript 3.0—Colin Moock (O’Reilly)
Object-Oriented ActionScript 3.0—Todd Yard, Peter Elst, Sas Jacobs (Friends of ED)

Video Training

Video training is good way to get started for some because it teaches by actual demonstration rather than descriptive text. Here are a couple of great resources with materials related to Flash and ActionScript.

Conferences

The initial explosion, and continued growth, of the Flash community was largely bolstered by conferences that focused on Flash and related technologies and gathered talented speakers from all over the world. If you get a chance to attend any of these conferences, you won’t regret it.

Libraries

While using a pre-created library of code is not typically common for beginner users, it’s very helpful to know that these libraries exist as you begin work on new projects. Sometimes, it’s worth investing a little time learning how to use a script library rather than reinventing the wheel. Libraries, when used in combination with knowing how to write your own scripts, can be powerful development assets. We’ve also included some ActionScript 3.0 documentation generators in this list. They’re not exactly libraries, but they can be used to create documentation for your libraries.

Collections