The big scary question

[autumn_whispers2me]

Okay, I'm fairly new to Flash and have NO programming experience or knowledge whatsoever. Now, having said that, it's driving me crazy not understanding actionscript in Flash. Having said that, do I need programming knowledge, classes, etc. in order to do this and will a book on Flash and Actionscript be too much for a novice like myself?

[Webforumz Staff]

I'd say the resources on the web plus maybe a good book should be fine. The biggest thing is to not be afraid to just try stuff and screw around with it. Set reasonable goals and build your knowledge with practice.

There's lots of flash files you can download off the web. Grab the ones that are interesting to you and pull them apart to see how they work. Anytime you find something unfamiliar look it up. That's the way I got familiar with actionscript.

[Webforumz Staff]

Everything that Catalyst says is definetly worth doing, but in terms of whether or not you should learn Actionscript, you need to ask yourself: How far do I want to go in Flash?

If you only ever want to make a few simple animations, then you probably won't need actionscript. In fact even some fairly beautifully designed sites only use very simple actionscript. However if you want to do anything advanced and learn Flash properly, you will of course need to tackle Actionscript. The best thing to do (and this is what I did), is to learn Actionscript as you learn Flash. The two really go hand in hand and you'll find that, as you need to do new things in Flash, they'll often require new bits of Actionscript.

The programming basics of Flash are covered here, you can find our list of Actionscript resources here and a good book always helps, in fact the Actionscript book on that page was chosen specifically by me because it caters for the complete beginner. Armed with that and the programming basics of Flash (above) and of course, this Forum and I would say that you're in a much better position for learning Actionscript than I was several years ago!

[autumn_whispers2me]

Thanks Sirkent, and everyone else. I guess I'd love to end up designing something really dynamic when it's all said and done. I would give you an example, which would have been http://www.estudio.com but they're working on their site and it's not working right now. Their site was the one that began this whole thing a couple of years ago. I've seen a lot of awesome Flash sites, but this one.... absolutely amazing. At this point I'm not even sure how to do anything with actionscript in Flash, so I need to do something. I'm still looking around for Flash 5 books, but I haven't been too lucky yet.

[Webforumz Staff]

I remember Estudio/Blitz and yes, there stuff was very impressive. I remember being quite amazed by their actionscripted sound sequences.

[autumn_whispers2me]

Oh yeah. I used to go to that site and think: "I want to be like them when I grow up." I'm 43... think there's still a chance? ??: