I’m very happy to announce the release of this book, and need to say a few things about it.
First, this is a direct JavaScript port of my previous books, Foundation ActionScript Animation: Making Things Move!, and Foundation ActionScript 3.0 Animation: Making Things Move!. Chapter by chapter, they cover the same material, but teach you how to do the same things in JavaScript, mostly with canvas.
Second, I cannot take full responsibility for this book. Beyond the fact that my books served as the foundation for this book, I did no work on the actual writing of this book and had very little if any input on the book. I didn’t actually see the final manuscript until it was complete. I say this not as a complaint, or in any attempt to cover my own butt, or any kind of warning about the book’s quality (see point #3), but merely as a statement of fact. I gave consent to the project and sat back and let it happen, hands-off.
Third, when I finally did see the manuscript, I was very much blown away by what Billy Lamberta had done. Major respect to work through all the chapters of that book, converting it all into another language, while still staying true to the original form and intent. I can’t say enough how impressed I am at the job he did. Thank you.
Fourth, I’m also stoked to see that Apress released a Kindle version of the book at the same time as the print edition. Also, if you don’t want the Kindle format, you can buy direct from Apress: http://www.apress.com/9781430236658 and get the PDF, mobi, and ePub versions all for one price. I’m really happy to see Apress, O’Reilly and PragProg all doing deals like that on ebooks, as I’m trying to steer clear of any and all hard copy books and go all digital these days.
Hey Keith, thanks for letting us know about this book. Despite being written for a technology I no longer program in, I consider your original to be one of the most valuable programming books on my shelf for its coverage and explanations of the math in animation. I’ve been meaning to read through it again, and go through the exercises to refresh my knowledge, but given how much easier it would be to use Vim and test in a browser than deal with setting up Flex Builder (or some other AS3 compilation tools) I bought this book instantly upon reading this post. Looking forward to going through it again!
And happy new year.
My copy is on it’s way to my home. I can’t wait to relive the magic of “making things move!”
Hopefully this will be my last hard copy book, on to a digital age!
This is welcome news. And still I wonder when I’ll be able to apply any of this new knowledge in production. I’m sure I’m not blowing any minds by observing how frustrating this transitional period has become. In my line of work, the extremes–IE6 and the latest mobile browser–are ensuring that the adoption of new technologies will proceed sluggishly at best. The funds simply aren’t available for a Flash fallback to accommodate IE6 users or a HTML5/JS fallback for mobile. Short of chiseling open client pocketbooks, I can’t imagine a solution that will make things better in the near term. Would love to discover there’s a magic bullet out there I haven’t heard about.
Got it via Amazon. £29.92 in the UK. Thanks!
The book is really, really cool.
Lamberta has a nice writing style.
And also teaches lots of other javascript tricks apart from the animation.
It even helped me get started writing my own 3d engine for fun ( https://github.com/Quinten/depthkit.js )
I didn’t just stick to formulas of the book though :s also created a movable and rotatable camera, a displaylist, fog, an OBJ parser,…
Here is a quick demo:
http://strafspul.be/depthkit/demos/Starfield.html
JS and Performance don’t play well together. You need a top end machine to run even a simple example. It’s a joke.
Not true, but I’m tired of arguing about technology on the web so I’ll pretend to agree with you.
I’m glad you agree, my poor laptop didn’t want to travel over seas to prove a point! that said, youtube is really killing it these days or can I just blame firefox? what tools do you use to locate performance issues?