The chapters are arranged by subject (interface & design, marketing & communication, technology & programming, technical advice, content/content management and e-commerce), each with an introduction from an experienced member of the industry. For the most part these intros give you a nice bit of insight into the mindsets of some of the bigger names in web design. The intro by Martin Hughes and Jordan Stone of WEFAIL was particularly good.

After the introduction, each chapter then proceeds into a series of do/don’t type lists with examples of sites relating to each list’s topic. This is where they really dropped the ball. Most of the advice they give can pretty much be boiled down to common sense. You’re supposed to use good quality images on your sites? People don’t like annoying Flash intros? No kidding! And since the majority of the example sites in the book were launched between 2004 and 2006, the majority of examples given have already become outdated already.

If you’re looking for anything other than a common sense refresher, you’ll find yourself somewhat disappointed with Guidelines for Online Success. I wouldn’t recommend Guidelines for Online Success, unless you want an FWA link dump from the last eight years.

For beginners, the book does a good job explaining core language fundamentals (variables, conditionals, loops, functions, etc.) and each aspect you would control with the language (vectors, pixels, sound, video, xml, etc.). And throughout the book’s tutorials the reader is shown the steps involved in building an XML based website, giving a nice continuity to some of the later chapters and reinforcing the importance of understanding the material.

As an experienced Flash developer, I particularly liked Chapter 7 on motion. They did an excellent job explaining how to use basic geometry and trigonometry within your Flash Projects for positioning and animation. It was a welcomed refresher.

I would recommend Learning ActionScript 3.0 to anyone wanting to familiarize themselves with Flash development. Otherwise, you would be doing yourself a disservice.

A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns by Joey Lott and Danny Patterson and found it quite helpful. Now knowing what the MVC, singleton, proxy, iterator, composite, decorator, command, memento and state patterns are I can better utilize them in my Flash projects and ultimately make better coded apps than I could before.

In addition to design patterns, the book also has a couple chapters on application design, programming interfaces, working with events, sending & loading data, E4X XML and regular expression, which offer more in-depth coverage than in other books.

In short, if you’re curious to learn more about classes and design patterns in ActionScript 3, I would recommend that you read Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns.

Overall, I would say that it was helpful and recommend it, but even though my copy was a first edition, it did seem like the book contained way too may typos (both grammatical and in the ActionScript itself). Typos aside, the chapters on the Display List and XML were both extremely concise and informative. If you’re unfamiliar with either, I’d recommend giving them a look.

Like the other books in O’Reilly’s Cookbook series, the ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook works as a quick reference to commonly encountered problems. Focusing on the end results, their problem/solution approach to education works well when you’re already somewhat familiar with their subject.