Components are “packaged” pieces of the Flash user interface, data integration tools, and media player that form the building blocks for building rich internet applications. They encapsulate complex functionality to make Flash development easier and more efficient, by letting developers reuse, share, and customize code. This book describes how to work with components and their supporting classes.

In Using ActionScript Components with Macromedia Flash 8, learn how to:
• Set component properties and parameters
• Write functions to handle component “events,” such as clicking, loading, and rollovers
• Customize component appearance
• Create your own components and distribute them to other developers and designers
• Use supporting classes for managing component depth and focus, or to customize data, styles, transition effects, and Web services

Includes the following books in the Macromedia online documentation:
• Using Components
• Components Language Reference

Powerful development and design tools require thorough and authoritative technical advice and documentation. When it comes to Macromedia Flash, no one is more authoritative than Macromedia Development and writing teams. Now their official documentation is available to you in printed book form. As you work, keep this guide by your side for ready access to valuable information on using Flash. We’ve designed it so that it’s easy to annotate as you progress.

Components are ?packaged? pieces of the Flash user interface, data integration tools, and media player that form the building blocks for building rich internet applications. They encapsulate complex functionality to make Flash development easier and more efficient, by letting developers reuse, share, and customize code. This book describes how to work with components and their supporting classes.

In Using ActionScript Components with Macromedia Flash 8, learn how to:
• Set component properties and parameters
• Write functions to handle component ?events,? such as clicking, loading, and rollovers
• Customize component appearance
• Create your own components and distribute them to other developers and designers
• Use supporting classes for managing component depth and focus, or to customize data, styles, transition effects, and Web services

Includes the following books in the Macromedia online documentation:
• Using Components
• Components Language Reference

Powerful development and design tools require thorough and authoritative technical advice and documentation. When it comes to Macromedia Flash, no one is more authoritative than Macromedia Development and writing teams. Now their official documentation is available to you in printed book form. As you work, keep this guide by your side for ready access to valuable information on using Flash. We’ve designed it so that it’s easy to annotate as you progress.

Components are “packaged” pieces of the Flash user interface, data integration tools, and media player that form the building blocks for building rich internet applications. They encapsulate complex functionality to make Flash development easier and more efficient, by letting developers reuse, share, and customize code. This book describes how to work with components and their supporting classes.

In Using ActionScript Components with Macromedia Flash 8, learn how to:
•    Set component properties and parameters
•    Write functions to handle component “events,” such as clicking, loading, and rollovers
•    Customize component appearance
•    Create your own components and distribute them to other developers and designers
•    Use supporting classes for managing component depth and focus, or to customize data, styles, transition effects, and Web services

Includes the following books in the Macromedia online documentation:
•    Using Components
•    Components Language Reference

Powerful development and design tools require thorough and authoritative technical advice and documentation. When it comes to Macromedia Flash, no one is more authoritative than Macromedia Development and writing teams. Now their official documentation is available to you in printed book form. As you work, keep this guide by your side for ready access to valuable information on using Flash. We’ve designed it so that it’s easy to annotate as you progress.

It is what it is.
This is nothing more than a printed version of the documentation that ships with Flash 8. As this is stated in the description of the book, and several of the reviews here, it shouldn’t surprise anyone when they receive the book in the mail expecting more.

Everything contained in this book can be found in the help files and PDF docs included with Flash 8, but it’s still great to have a printed reference that you can actually make notes in and bookmark. The docs could use a little more in the way of examples, but if all you’re looking for is a good printed version of the Flash reference materials, this is a good resource.

A Different View
As others have noted, this book is available as a PDF from Adobe / Macromedia and also in the Help section within Flash. This is also stated in the description of the book, so I wasn’t surprised at what I received.

If you are the type of person who gets by with online documentation and/or PDFs, then don’t buy this book. I am a professional Flash developer and have other Flash developers working for me, and I find printed books indispensable when used in conjunction with the Help system.

If you want a single printed volume documenting all of the components that come with Flash 8, then this is the book you want.

Book too advanced, no media included, waste of paper, 80% of the book is just printed help
if you are a beginner or intermediate, this book is not for you, it is for advanced programmers, in ActionScript 2.

Also, 80% of the book is a waste of paper, nothing more than printed help you can get from the help menu or online support.

the good thing, is that it covers 90% of the advanced topics, in my case, I spend about 2 years learning action script 2, it misses how to merge 2 or more components in 1 single distributable component, also it misses how to include custom graphic component inspector.

so, with that in mind, I give it 3 stars.

Good Reference for Flash Components
What are Flash Components? According to this work’s many authors Flash components are "movie clips with parameters that allow you to modify their appearance and behavior" (p. 11). The main purpose of this book is to show you how to use Flash 8 components to facilitate the development of applications while providing a standard, yet customizable, user interface. The first 200 pages of this nearly 1800 page book provide detailed tutorials in all aspects of the Flash components. Familiar Flash components are such user interface controls as scrollbars and scrollpanes; however, there are also non-visual Flash components. The rest of the book is a components language reference that provides information on the edition, usage, parameters, description and examples for each.

When I opened this book it was because I was more interested in learning how to more elegantly "skin" existing Flash components. Although I had used scrollpanes and some other interface elements, I had not been able to achieve the look that I desired. Luckily for me, how to modify Flash’s existing components, and much more, are elegantly covered in this book’s first five chapters. Each chapter provides numerous code examples and tutorials to teach you the in’s and out’s of using listeners, setting focus and skinning user interface elements. The thorough step-by-step instructions will be invaluable to anyone wanting to learn more about what components are and how to control their look and behaviors.

Later chapters in the book cover how to get started in creating your own components. Although for the moment this has less appeal to me, any developer building applications with Flash would find these sections of immense interest.

Disappointing
This book was put out by Macromedia itself, that is what is shocking. I expected an original book that would be instructive, to complement the technical online documention. I opened the book and got reprints of the online technical documentation. The authors and whoever was responsible for this book were not stupid, they knew that everyone buying this book would be mislead by the title, and would think that they were getting original material by a profession writer skilled at making things clear, not reprints of the online technical manual. Save yourself the effort, and just flush $30 down the toilet rather than buying this book. Hopefully Adobe puts a stop to the type of nonsense that Macromedia would pull off to make a quick buck.

Disappointing
This book was put out by Macromedia itself. Based on the title, I expected an original book that would be well written and instructive, to complement the more dry technical online documention. I opened the book and found it largely an effort to make a quick buck, providing little that is not already freely available on-line. The first section of the book is ok as another reviewer pointed out. However the bulk is just reprint filler. I feel I got "taken" on this one. Hopefully Adobe will either put more effort that Macromedia did into the quality of its publishing, or leave that job to those that are willing to do so.

Huge Disappointment
The first 190 pages deal with how to customize components and how to create your own components - basically information found in the Flash Help section.

The last 1528 pages are a *replica* of the Flash Help - Components Language Reference section.

1908 pages of the Flash Help section without word search capabilities!

The only positive thing I can say is if these five authors are responsible for the Flash Help section, they did a great job. I just don’t like paying for photo copies of something I already have.

Good offline reference
Would be nice to have more examples.
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Cheers.
LordAlex Leon
www.lordalex.org

Fairly a good offline reference
Beware of little mistakes on the scripts (don’t trust them literally), for example on page 1471 on Tree script:
function TreeNavMenu() {

//Deal with appearance tree
menuTree.setStyle("fontFamily", "_sans");
menuTree.setStyle("fontSize", 12);
//Load the default menu
menuXML = new XML();
menuXML.ignoreWhite = true;
menuXML.load("TreeNavMenu.xml");
menuXML.onLoad = function() {
treeNavMenu.onMenuLoaded();
};
}
===
this should be:

function TreeNavMenu() {

//Deal with appearance tree
menuTree.setStyle("fontFamily", "_sans");
menuTree.setStyle("fontSize", 12);
//Load the default menu
menuXML = new XML();
menuXML.ignoreWhite = true;
menuXML.load("TreeNavMenu.xml");
var ref = this;
menuXML.onLoad = function() {
ref.onMenuLoaded();
};
}
------------------
Cheers.
LordAlex Leon
www.lordalex.org