over the next while I'll be posting the first paragraph or two from each chapter in Essential ActionScript 3.0. here's chapter 1, paragraph 1... 1. Core Concepts A program is a set of written instructions to be executed (i.e., carried out) by a computer or a software application. The written, human-readable text of a program is called source code, or just code. The person who creates a program is called...

Essential ActionScript 3.0 is now available for pre-order. you can pre-order: >> from amazon.com >> from amazon.ca >> from amazon.co.uk if you order using the above link i get a small percentage of the sale (about $1-$2 i think). the commissions do add up, and are much appreciated as they help carry me through long research phases. in general, if you are buying a book on programming, it's a Nice...

The final Essential ActionScript 3.0 manuscript has officially been sent to production. O'Reilly will now do some copy editing and layout, and will ship the printed book in June. The final softcopy page-count is just over 900 pages. Final chapters should start appearing on rough cuts this month. Here's the final table of contents: Part I: ActionScript from the Ground Up (450 pages) 1 Core Concepts (41) 2 Conditionals and...

O'Reilly has just added another chapter to Essential ActionScript 3.0 on Rough Cuts. The new chapter covers event handling and custom events. >> Visit Essential ActionScript 3.0's Official Rough Cuts Page...

O'Reilly has just added two more chapters to Essential ActionScript 3.0 on Rough Cuts. The new chapters cover text and vector drawing. Here's the list of chapters now available: Chapter 15, Flash Player Security Restrictions Chapter 16, The Display API and the Display List Chapter 17, Events and Display Hierarchies Chapter 18, Interactivity Chapter 20, Programmatic Animation Chapter 21, Drawing with Vectors Chapter 22, Bitmap Programming Chapter 23, Text Display...

O'Reilly has just added three more chapters to Essential ActionScript 3.0 on Rough Cuts. The current list of chapters available is now as follows: Chapter 15, Flash Player Security Restrictions Chapter 16, The Display API and the Display List Chapter 17, Events and Display Hierarchies Chapter 18, Interactivity Chapter 20, Programmatic Animation Chapter 22, Bitmap Programming Chapter 24, Loading External Display Assets >> Visit Essential ActionScript 3.0's Official Rough Cuts...

Yesterday, Adobe officially contributed ActionScript 3.0's virtual machine (AVM2) to the Mozilla Foundation for integration into Mozilla (and, by extension, Firefox and Thunderbird). Within Mozilla, AVM2 will be known as "Tamarin". This means that at some point in the future... * Mozilla's core JavaScript language will run faster (see initial performance tests) * Mozilla's core JavaScript language (i.e., the syntax for defining functions, variables, loops, conditions, classes, interfaces, and so...

Jon Gay and Robert Tatsumi (the creators of Flash) have teamed up with Gary Grossman (the creator of ActionScript) and Peter Santangeli (former vice president of engineering at Macromedia) to create a new start up company named Software As Art. So far, no public information on the new company's products or services is available. Looks like for now, we'll all just have to wait and see what these Flash pioneers...

Grant Skinner recently posted his lecture notes on optimization and garbage collection (from FlashForward 2006 Austin). Grant explains what garbage collection is, how garbage collection works in ActionScript 3.0, and what strategies you should follow when managing a program's resources. Well worth a look. >> view Grant's resource management lecture notes See also Grant's collection of articles on resource management Thanks for filling this documentation gap Grant!...

flash player 9 for linux, beta 1 has just been released. >> get it here if you're interested in the development of Flash Player on linux, you might enjoy Flash Player engineer Tinic Uro's comments, as well as Mike Melanson's ongoing development blog....