Flash & ActionScript noob looking for help, and books?

[tailz]

Hello,
I'm new to this interesting forum and I'm hoping I can find some help here. I have just started to teach myself Flash and I am looking for a book or online tuts that I can learn ActionScript 3.0 from. So far from looking in my local book store I have found a wealth of literature that would be helpful if I was trying to integrate a Flash site via ActionScript 3.0 with a database, or some other programming intensive application - but sadly, I'm a simple artist, I can make the pretty pictures but cutting code makes my head hurt. I'm looking for something a little simpler to help me with making buttons and basic user interface elements - the hard "code" type stuff I'll tackle later.

So, any pointers??

Also, could someone point me towards a good resource for the basic elements of ActionScript 3.0?? I am using the Adobe ActionScript Language and Components Reference at the moment but the samples provided go beyond displaying what the simple code elements do, eg: I want to make my button load a web URL, I tracked down that I would need to use the element: NavigateToURL(). But the sample is very confusing.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[ajcates]

Post your sample code and ask for it to be explained line for line, as long as its not 400 lines long someone should help you out and explain each line of code. Google around for more simple samples like the NavigateToURL() and try them out and if you get stuck come back here and ask questions, this is how I learned.

[tailz]

Ajcates wrote:

Post your sample code and ask for it to be explained line for line, as long as its not 400 lines long someone should help you out and explain each line of code. Google around for more simple samples like the NavigateToURL() and try them out and if you get stuck come back here and ask questions, this is how I learned.
Well I was just trying to make a simple button that when clicked loads a web page in the browser. I thought this code would work:

Function onButtonClick(evt:MouseEvent):void {
NavigateToURL(www.mysite.com,_self);
}

MyButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,onButto nClick);

[SchmackLab]

www.lynda.com

watch the free movies and decide for yourself if it is worth the money to get the rest But I think it's worth every penny.

[tailz]

SchmackLab wrote:

www.lynda.com

watch the free movies and decide for yourself if it is worth the money to get the rest But I think it's worth every penny.
Lynda.com is a good source to learn from, and I have just watched the Flash CS3 Essential Training videos. But I don't want to watch hours of videos about how I can integrate a database into my interactive web site or about how to pass a string of data via a URL to a javascript engine, when all I want are the basics of how to make a simple button work. Those things are great if your already familiar with C++ or some other programming language, but this would be the first "language" I've ever poked a stick at. So all I am interested in, as a designer, is just making buttons, anything deeper than that I'll poke a stick at later, much later.