Simon Willison’s Weblog

Learning Flash for programmers?

30th March 2006

I’ve decided it’s about time I learnt some Flash, mainly because of the exciting opportunities posed by the Flash-JavaScript bridge. It’s become pretty obvious now that Flash is the most practical option for dealing with audio and video on the Web, and the bridge means that anything Flash can do is now available to JavaScript as well. Google Finance and the Yahoo! JS-Flash Maps API are just two recent examples of why this stuff is worth knowing more about.

I have minimal design skills, so much of the Flash literature out there isn’t much use to me. Does anyone have any recommendations for books and tutorials on Flash aimed at programmers? Something similar to Dive into Python would be ideal, but failing that any tips on climbing the Flash learning curve would be welcome.