5 books every flash developer should read (at least once)
January 30th, 2008 by Slav
This is a highly subjective list of books I think every developer should read at least once. Some of them are worth reading couple of times, or from time to time coming back to re-read certain passages. The first 3 books do not mention Flash inside them even once. All five, however; do cover spectrum of Flash related topics. As this is a list of books flash developer should read, I do not go into areas of multimedia, there could be another list dedicated to just sound editing, just video editing, just to 3D etc..
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1. Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
by Steve McConnell
A true programmers bible. This book doesn’t teach you how to program in specific language, but rather how to become a good programmer. Steve covers all important aspects of code construction, from something seemingly unimportant as naming your variables and methods to code tuning, optimisation and documentation. And much more. This book really changed the way I think about writing code. Absolute must read. |
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2. Head First Design Patterns
Head First Design Patterns
by Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra
Although there are quite a few design patterns books written specifically for ActionScript now, this book remains my favorite on this topic. It is both entertaining and education and though it uses Java code to illustrate the patterns, the application of it can be easily transferred to other languages such as ActionScript. |
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3. The Elements of Typographic Style
by Robert Bringhurst
This guy loves his fonts and after reading this book you’ll become typography enthusiast yourself. Why is this book in my list? Although flash is capable of displaying images, video and playing sound, still probably more then half of the content is expressed in written form. And so you have to make choices about the text / page layout and form, and this book is the best I’ve ever read on the topic of typography. |
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4. Essential ActionScript 3.0
by Colin Moock
If you are a flash developer I to not need to introduce Colin to you. You would have read all of his books from Definitive Guide of Flash MX to the this last one. All of his books have in common the unprecedented level of depth and knowledge of the flash and ActionScript. I got one next to my monitor at home at all time and one at work as well. (Especially since the Flash on the beach, where we’ve all got a free copy of this book : ) |
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5. Foundation Actionscript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move!
by Keith Peters
There are digital artist nowadays, like Joshua Davis , that use code to create art. This is a book for people that doesn’t just want to rely on the timeline and motion tweens to do the animation. It’s a great introduction in the concepts of trigonometry , programmatic motion, physics, springs, friction, easing and bouncing, forward and inverse kinematics and even a basics of 3D animation! |
So that was my personal list. Do you have a different / better list ? Any other books that you think should be in the top five ? If so , let me know !
Posted in AS3, Personal, books, flash
January 30th, 2008 at 11:10 am
maybe you should offer amazon links, so people can order them too
(might also make you some money
January 30th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
As opposed to VBasic programmers, Flash programmer do a lot of interface work, so if your flash programming will end in applications that actually will be used by peopled, I would recommend The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman. This book doesn’t deal with flash at all , it doesn’t even deal with software, but it will forever change the way you design your interfaces.
January 30th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
That is a great list, I would add one book to the end of it, ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns by Will Sanders & Chandima Cumaranatunge It is great to sees the patterns done in AS.
February 8th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
maarten : Ad: “might also make you some money”
not sure how , but yeah, why not.. next time I will add some Amazon links. And will wait for some checks from Amazon in the mail!