The great chapters.ca boat sailed into port - last week Essential Actionscript 3.0 by Colin Moock arrived on my doorstop. First impressions this is by far the biggest tech book to grace my shelves. 900+ pages worth, it dwarfs O’Reillys recently released Programming Flex 2 book.

This book really does cover everything from general programming skills to the nitty gritty of E4X useage. The work that has gone into this book by Mr Moock shows. Approximately the first ~350 pages of the book is devoted to Core Actionscript & OOP principles in general, the second half Flash/Flex features such as XML, Drawing API, Security etc. Coupled with the Programming Flex 2 book I really think that’s all you need for your bookshelf.

My learning style is to learn by example (I skim read text - but thoroughly read code to understand) which is covered off really well, the vast majority of pages have a short code fragment or diagram to complement the text along with longer full code examples where applicable.

Essential AS3 has depth to each and every topic, the ones I’ve read thus far anyway, going through example after example illustrating different facets of the topic - the XML chapter was particularly impressive. Too often you read a book and feel like you have to go back to the great Google Gods to discover more, whereas with this book I feel like that’s all I need right there.

All in all, the best tech book I’ve purchased (even over the famous Agile Web Development with Rails book). Value for money can’t be beat, cost me about $55CAD to my doorstep - and illustrates how thankful I am living in Canada now, after being used to New Zealand book prices! It’s already taken pride of place by the keyboard as I’m working on our new widget seller solution.

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