WaveSpace

In my experience, O'Reilly press has consistently made the best technical books. I've owned or at least borrowed (heavily) more than a few, particularly those in the Java, Perl, and UNIX lines.

So when I wanted to learn ActionScript (Flash), I was pleased to find ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook. I immediately found section titles specifically geared for what I wanted to do, like loading images via URL, scrolling, passing variables from HTML pages. Furthermore, the first few chapters got me up to speed on language basics very quickly. The "cookbook" style text works extremely well for learning a new language when you are already familiar with the concepts, such as event handlers or associative arrays. I had written a nearly complete version of what I envisioned that evening, and finished it in another evening. Glancing at other sections, it looks like this book will continue to work for me up the learning curve for quite some time. All in all, this is one of the best titles from O'Reilly, which means it is really quite exceptional. Coupled with the language reference and SDK, it's all you need to get started.

ActionScript 3.0 combines the best of Java (strongly typed, object-oriented, namespaces, compiled) and JavaScript (simplicity, syntax). Actually, it looks like ActionScript 3.0 and JavaScript 2.0 will be one and the same; AS3 will be formalized as the next version of the JavaScript standard. Adobe has donated the virtual machine to the Mozilla project for use in future versions of Firefox and other applications.

Here's my first Flash "movie" (I prefer the term "applet"). Since our (HiRISE) images typically have unusual aspect ratios (like 1:4 or 1:8), this Scroller allows the thumbnail versions to be embedded in a web page like a more commonly sized image (1:1 or 4:3). It also displays a scale bar, which may be dragged around.

The sourcecode is available.

I've been staunchly opposed to Flash for many a year; now, oddly, I find that it is my new favorite programming language.

You see, I had this idea for a small project that seemed best written in Flash. The following table outlines what has changed that has made me reconsider it.