How did you learn Actionscript?

[Thayn]

Hi I'm relatively new to Actionscript

my question is:
how did you "experts" learn Actionscript in its entirity?

and/or:
what would your recommendation be to best learn Actionscript? (preferably something that doesn't cost money:p)

however you learned please state the source and how that worked for you

thx,

Thayn:)

[stealthelephant]

im not an expert ( yet :)) but i only at actionscipt about 1 month or so.
i really helps if u know how to program already, if u want to use the OO cababilities of actionscript then u should know java or c++ or some other OO language.
the tutorials online are good once u already know how to program but before that u should get a reference book, colin moocks actionscript for flash mx has over 500 pages reference material and its on amazon for about $30, it also teaches you how to program from start.
as always, with every language, doing things urself will turn u into an expert

[bluegel]

now, Im sorry if this sounds annoying to you, but Im very busy at work at the moment, but have you done a search on this.

um .... here are some links:

link1 (http://www.actionscript.ca/forums/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=29710&highlight=learn)

link2 (http://www.actionscript.ca/forums/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=27894&highlight=learn)

link3 (http://www.actionscript.ca/forums/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=27109&highlight=learn)

link4 (http://www.actionscript.ca/forums/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=25465&highlight=learn)

link5 (http://www.actionscript.ca/forums/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=24531&highlight=learn)

[farafiro]

Thayn
welcome to the forums

I will move this to the General Chat, as it doesn't belong to here
and follow blugel links, great ;)

[xxlm]

Ok, for my case (neither an expert), I think the best way is to define a project you wanna do. Don't limit yourself by wondering if the language could do it or not. Just imagine a project (ambitious one).

Then begin to design/code.

And THEN you willl learn. Asking question to learn tricks (lots of) and other stuff, but moreover, you will learn the LIMITS of the language, you will know what it can do or not.
So this first project will be hard, very hard, and not so good (it was my case :) ). But you will learn lots of things.

My 2 XPF (franc pacific = money of new caledonia).

CU

[xxlm]

LOL...
Answering after tg and subquark, my post is before them...

Thx stock and jesse. Now I can take all the time I want (lazy I am) to answering thread, never be the last one...

Anyway, not the subject of the thread.
:D

Happy learning!

[xxlm]

Not stock, but strock...
Sorry... ;)

Happy Flashing :)

[tg]

i'm no expert either, but the best way to learn is to open up the software, and try to do a specific thing... then come to the forums here and ask specific questions about what you want to do... over time you just start picking it up... tutiorials here will take you a long ways also... and you will learn alot by doing searchs in the forums and reading thru alot of old posts. you will get many great points a view this way.

good luck.

[subquark]

Hi Thayn! Welcome to the best forum out there. This is the place to learn, but I'm convinced that it's a gene or something completely out of my control.

Lots of reading, lots of late nights, lots and lots of failures and a little luck! The great thing about this forum is you can see all kinds of questions on topics you have no idea are even possible and see great solutions. Often more than one solution (that really gets me down . . .).

I have learned more here in a few months than a few years of reading. But, read you must. So hang out, ask questions (no question too dumb, gee I asked what happened to my trace comments after I checked a box the box that said "omit trace actions").

Check out the tutorials, they are very well written. Good luck and I'll see you on the board!
:)

[subquark]

Answering after tg and subquark, my post is before them... Hey, I'm of french tongue too!

So stock and jesse, what do I have to do to be special?!?!:p
I'm already schedulked to have babies for CyanBlue, Retrotron and Billy T (although I'm going to pretend not to enjoy having Retrotron's). So I'm pretty babied out.

How about a martini party?

Anyway, back to the topic at hand: not only check out the tutorials here, but on some of the other (and in my opinion; lesser) forums (oh, just kidding) like: kirupa.com, flashkit.com, flashdevils.com to name a few.

XXLM's suggestion is excellent. Maybe design your portfolio site and try to do as much with AS as possible. And as a novice, you may not know if something is possible but layout your project on paper and go nuts with interactivity. Once you have a solid idea what you want to do, start asking questions here (like: can I access the CIA computer database (Culinary Institute of America) to display recipes (see Freddycodes about that, he has a killer app that really works well, I looked up martinis of course . . .).

Best of luck and hope to see your questions so that I can learn too! :)

Oh, jesse and stock (who is stock?!?!:confused: ), you can just keep bumping my post to the last one . . . ;)

[Jesse]

subquark - Crazy. If it keeps happenning let us know.

Well I've said it a million times but I learned ActionScript having never programmed before. I found the best way to learn was to read tutorials on the basics, study open source and try to help people solve their problems on Forums such as these. I also made games as they generally use a lot of different AS code and test your ability to think creatively.
Having said all that, I'm the first to acknowledge that my coding skills have improved markedly with formal education in programming (my Comp Sci degree, which I started after learning ActionScript). So a good book or a short course (I'd go the book) is probably a good idea too.
Finally I'll say that learning AS (or any programming language) is like learninga foreign language; you have to keep at it, as you're always learning new things.

[subquark]

that is great advice, especially the game stuff (which I am too scared to try). listen to Jesse, he may be humble, but he is a Flash Guru!

Offerings to the Guru on Tuesday afternoons! Bring cheesecake.

Thanks Jesse for helping me, and many others, explore what has been the most rewarding (and frustrating) advocation in my life. :)

[Jesse]

Thanks sub but I'm dairy intolerant :)

[Colin Campbell]

I learned from Flash Kit (http://www.flashkit.com) and Sitepoint (http://www.sitepoint.com) until I discovered the wonders of this great site. I also bought this book called The Flash MX Actionscript Bible . I have a couple questions about code in it though. Would someone help through chat or PM? PM me if you can help to clarify some code I don't quite understand.

[retrotron]

You know, this is the first time I've ever stopped by the General Chat forum, but I like questions like this, as I'm very interested in learning and teaching techniques.

My two cents.

The books are great. I read about 10 of them to get a grasp on things. However, I found most of them very difficult to understand for a non-programmer like myself. Most authors assume WAY too much. But by studying a lot of them and trying really hard to understand what each word meant, I started getting the general picture. Like was said, it's a foreign language, so super intense exposure will do wonders for you.

Once I understood the basics of how actionscript worked, the forums started making a huge difference, especially the help of those like senocular, cyanblue, freddycodes, etc, i.e. those willing to take the time to explain in detail what I was asking about. They still do this, and you can't beat that kind of help.

Another really effective technique I used was to try and make hundreds of little code snippets. Anytime I needed to do something I didn't know how to do, I would create a new .fla and try and do it as simply as possible. For example, if I wanted to figure out how to use array.pop(), I would create a blank .fla, create an array with 2 elements, and then try and remove the second element with array.pop(). Once I did that, I had a general idea of how array.pop() worked. Somewhere I've got all these little files laying around, and sometimes I even go back to them if I can't remember how to do something.

The trick is to keep it simple when you do these kinds of things, to get all the complexities out and do it with as little room for error as possible. Plus, if I couldn't get that simple one to work, then I can always post on the forum and ask the question. Since it's such a simple question people are more likely to answer it right away, and like subquark said, I usually can get a bunch of different ways to solve it.

Besides, that's a good debugging practice/code building practice: start simple, make sure it works, then add on bit by bit, checking to make sure it works each time. If you get to a point that you can't seem to make work, back up a step and try again. Anyways, that technique really, really worked for me.

And of course, as these cats said, if you are lucky enough to get in a pressure situation where you got a gig or something, that'll really push in ways we didn't know possible. ;)

[subquark]

Offerings to the Guru on Tuesday afternoons! Bring cheesecake. And beano. :p