Starling is an ActionScript 3 2D framework developed on top of the Stage3D APIs (available on desktop in Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3). Starling is mainly designed for game development, but could be used for many other use cases. Starling makes it possible to write fast GPU accelerated applications without having to touch the low-level Stage3D APIs.
Most Flash developers want to be able to leverage GPU acceleration (through Stage3D) without the need to write such higher-level frameworks and dig into the low-level Stage3D APIs. Starling is completely designed after the Flash Player APIs and abstracts the complexity of Stage3D (Molehill) and allows easy and intuitive programming for everyone.
Obviously Starling is for ActionScript 3 developers, especially those involved in 2D game development; of course you will need to have a basic understanding of ActionScript 3. By its design (lightweight, flexible and simple), Starling can be used also be used for other use cases like UI programming. That said, everything is designed to be as intuitive as possible, so any Java™ or .Net™ developer will get the hang of it quickly as well.
Thibault Imbert is a Flash Player product manager focused on graphics and rendering. After a few years working for different French agencies as a Flash developer, Thibault became an Adobe Certified Instructor in Paris where he taught ActionScript at an Adobe training center. In 2008 Thibault released a free and open-source ActionScript 3 book called Pratique d'ActionScript 3, which was recently rewritten for Flash Player 10 and released by Pearson in 2009. More recently, he released a white paper about performance optimizations for the Flash Platform. During his spare time, Thibault works on different open-source projects like WiiFlash or AlivePDF for the Flash Platform community. Most of his experiments are available on his blog, ByteArray.org. Thibault also attends conferences about ActionScript and likes listening to funky music and cooking macaroons.
This book is for any Flash Platform developer that is looking to create next generation of mobile and desktop apps (or games). It's a book so practical that introduce you to the Starling framework, explaining how it works with simple examples of code that you can put in practice in a while. Thibault guides you showing each object presents in this framework, that is an abstraction of Stage3D API introduced with Flash Player 11 and AIR 3. With Starling you can aim better performance in your 2D applications thankfully the GPU acceleration added on Stage3D, with this book you can discover what there is behind and starting to develop with it.
1/22/2012
(2 of 3 customers found this review helpful)
4.0
Great intro to Starling, but not perfect
By craiggrummitt
from Melbourne, Australia
About Me Developer
Pros
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Cons
Too many errors
Best Uses
Expert
Comments about oreilly Introducing Starling:
A great introduction to Starling, well structured, well explained and contains comprehensive examples.
The only major drawback is there are obvious editorial issues in the text and bugs/errors in the code examples.
But - it's free, so I'm not complaining. It's an invaluable read if you're interested in this new framework.
