Learning Actionscript at all was a jump I had to make to feel I was going to be able to create the high-quality presentation media that I felt was up to standard for my caliber of clients and for my company.  This came along with learning PHP/mySql, which put me enough in touch with programming to be competent, but hardly expert.

Learning Actionscript 2 is not easy for a non-programmer, but I found lots of online tutorials and was able to grind my way up the ladder and become able to create pretty advanced animations and controls.  When Flash CS came out, and Flash’s capabilities to create full web sites with great interacitivy, there was no turning back.  The road I travelled became one of a “no mans land” between art & design and programming.

I suppose this article and those that will follow are part of my version of “pay it forward,” as I got lots of free help from others on the Internet (Adobe’s documentation is clearly NOT written to help non-programmers and typically uses convoluted and advanced examples to illustrate simple basics) in learning how to get results with code.  Hopefully, some of the comments I make here will help others to face the somewhat overwhelming wall of “data intensive” learning curves that accompany this highly useful medium of multimedia presentation.

Actionscript 3 forces one to pretty much learn things all over again up to a point.  I purchased about three different books JUST to get a handle on the subject, especially to help me translate things over from Actionscript 2 to AS3.  Being someone who was already struggling to push my way into programming anything very advanced with AS3, it was REALLY difficult to face up to the learning curve with AS3.  A tip I would give anyone new to this – forget what ANYONE says. Unless you are an EXPERIENCED programmer, learning the new Actionscript 3 is going to drive you have nuts, especially if you hope to depend on Adobe’s convoluted documentation to give you practical guidance on how to proceed with learning it.

BUT – IT’S WORTH THE TROUBLE!  The cool features and new methods ARE really cool.  The over-all code strategy IS easier to deal with once you get over the shock of having to learn about clases, the Document Class, and the completely new system where practically every interaction is based around event-listeners. 

Also, the error checking system is confoundedly strict.  BUT again, it’s also helpful because the error messages are very specific and most of the time actually point you to the exact thing you need to fix to debug your code.  So guidance is built in to that degree.

I’m now successfully working with code for XML playlists, music players, video players, photo galleries, external loaders and full dynamic web sites, all using AS3.  I have to say it’s getting pretty cool and my clients are happy with what they get for their money!

I’ll try to point out tips and successful ways to handle the learning curve and perhaps some of the sources of information that have helped me, as I have time, on this blog. 

-R