Hey Gary,

I just got the book, and I'm really, really liking it so far. I'm seeing techniques that are really clever. You are quite the programmer (for example: the Math.min and Math.max stuff in the paddle ball game, to limit the range of the paddle). I also like your website, and intend to be a frequent visitor as I learn more about how to program games. I had a suggestion, and a question:

Suggestion: You should make the game demos on your site easier to find. Right now it's just a bit difficult to find the link to take you to the game demo page (You have to go to the home page, scroll all the way down, and find the tiny link that says "this page"). You should consider adding a link to that page in a prominent place, like perhaps under the section that says "Site Contents." The games are so cool, and they're good advertising for your book, so I can't see why you'd want to make them hard to find.

Question: I noticed that the game demos each open up in a new browser window. This uses the javascript function window.open(). Is this the preferred (or recommended) way of publishing games? What I'm getting at is this: I tried this method for publishing some of my flash content once, and it seemed that when I sent a few friends to the page to check it out, sometimes their browser's popup blocker wouldn't allow the window to come up, and I was disappointed that I'd chosen this route. Is there a trick to opening in a new window and getting around any potential popup blockers, or do you just leave it to the user to allow the popup?

Finally, if you get a chance, would you check out: http://www.mazoons.com/flash/listen_maze_black.html ? My work is with mazes. It's a hobby I pursue in my "spare" time, and for the last few years I've been working on using Flash to make my mazes interactive (more like a game) instead of just simply print and solve. The above link was written in AS2, but now I'm learning AS3 (and classes and OOP), and now along comes your book, and I'm thinking if I can manage to absorb some of your techniques, it's going to propel me into the stratosphere, so to speak.

Mazoonist (Mr. Jody Hall)