I am about done with all of the examples in this book...and...Yeah it's definitely a mixed bag on this one! Overall, this is a good book for coders wanting to move from basic AS (gotoAndPlay(etc..);) - to "real" coding (streaming MP3's with volume and balance controls). But...man is this book inconsistent! For one example the author will have you place the code for a function for a button on the first frame of the main timeline - where it should be "per Mr. Moock" - then in the next example he'll tell you to place a function directly on a button itself. Huh? And speaking of the MP3 player - why do you need to write a fully "OOP-compliant" volume control when nothing else in the book even metions OOP? I replaced 5 lines of code for that little sucker with 1 line of code.
That said, however, I haven't had any problems with the example code in the book (other than my own typos and brain cramps - but that's my own problem). As for the CD I ignored it as usual. I always make my own graphics and type every example in a book myself, even if only to learn my own "favorite mistakes."
I would highly recommend this book if you use it along with Colin Moock's AS book. This book has what his lacks - lots of simple straightforward coding examples. I only got through half of Moock's book before I started "Flash Advanced" (all theory and no application is, well, pretty pointless) - but the half I read of Moock's book has allowed me to make sense of the scattershot approach of this book (and to recode all the examples so that they can be placed on the main timeline where they belong). I have since bought, and begun, the Actionscript Cookbook, and that book would seem a logical next step - the final section of it builds full applications.
Bottom line: Hey - no book is perfect. This is an OK book for intermediate coders that is dying to be a great book. Is there an editor in the house???
