Customer Reviews

Adobe Flash CS3 Professional On Demand

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I definitely recommend the Adobe Flash CS3 Professional on Demand if you're just starting to learn Flash. This book is extremely easy to follow. It's in full color (which helps me learn a lot faster than those boring black and white printed books), each step doesn't take no more than a page to explain, plus they put in Did You Know? and FYI notes for more tips. I usually stick with the Visual QuickStart Guide books b/c they're easy to follow. But this book has taught me to look at others. Shame on me. I'm learning Flash faster than I ever thought.

This book is nice as a quick, personal, desktop reference. I love that every page is in color, that truly makes a difference when you are trying to connect the book instructions with what is happening on your screen. But I was searching for a book to serve as a required text in an educational multimedia course (and as a valuable reference after the course), and this title has no accompanying disk with real life examples that my students could use to follow and create Flash components; the entire book uses "for instance" and hypothetical examples.

I kept searching and found that the Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Hands-On Training book suits my need for my students. The book is largely in color, provides step-by-step instsructions, and comes with a full CD of libraries and materials so students can finish each lesson with an actual product that they created.

As a certified Adobe expert in Flash, my personal opinion is that this book is one of the worst EVER written on the topic. Almost EVERY single page has errors as it pertains to the software. All the Actionscript is in 2.0 while ActionScript 3.0 is by far the biggest enhancement to the Flash CS3 product line is excluded. As someone who reads almost every book on the subject, you can never believe how BAD this book is. Steer clear!

For those of you migrating from Actionscript 2 to 3 DO NOT BUY this book. Willy nilly though out the authors mix in older code with new code. Has a chapter on behaviors that is no longer supported. There are much better books out there.

I bought it and returned it.

I am the author for this book. Out of respect for Andy Anderson's high level of contribution to the previous versions of this book (for which he was fully compensated), I included his name on this updated title. Future reprints of this title will be changed accordingly with the publisher.

In regards to ActionScript 3.0, this title walks you through the use of ActionScripting, but it is not a book on writing AS 3.0 code, which is out of the scope of this beginner to intermediate level book. As an author, I welcome any specific corrections that are needed to make the next printing a better book.

Flash CS3 is the most significant release from Adobe so far and this book by Andy Anderson and Steve Johnson is a quick reference guide that covers the new Flash CS3. The book's format makes it a great how-to source. Each task, from drawing with the Pen tool to working with Flash components, is presented on two-page spreads containing step-by-step instructions and screenshots. New CS3 features, indicated by a "What's New" icon, are easy to find.

For those readers who need more in-depth coverage, extra information is presented in the sidebars and there are several workshops at the end of the book that pull together individual tasks into projects such as a customized cursor, cursor chaser, user defined button and analog clock.

The book begins with the very basic tasks such as starting, opening and saving a new project. Next the authors examine the new workspace and give how-tos for the new tools. Creating graphics is the next topic which includes the improvements to the Pen tool as well as other drawing and painting tools. Once you learn how to create graphics, the authors introduce the basics for creating Flash magic such as the Library Panel, symbols, instances and the many built-in components.

Next, you learn how to add text into your Flash movie. The authors teach you how to set font characteristics, how to embed fonts into your movie and how to use CSS and HTML to display dynamic text. Using graphics from other Adobe software such as Photoshop and Illustrator is much easier with the improved CS3 integration and the authors discuss several ways to use these improvements to increase your workflow.

Animation is the backbone of Flash and the authors cover several types of animation that you can easily create in Flash. They start with the basics for creating manual animation within the Timeline which includes keyframes, frame-by-frame animation and onion skinning. Next, they cover automated animation such as tweening, special effects such as masking and filters such as blur and drop shadow. Video is becoming more popular on the web now that more readers have broadband access. The authors discuss how to use the Video Import Wizard and the Media Controller to add video to your Flash movie.

Now it's time to introduce a little ActionScript. The authors begin with easy tasks such as loading graphics and movie clips. They also cover basic OOP, which is more important with the upgrade to ActionScript 3 in this new Flash release. You will learn about dot syntax, methods, conditionals, functions, event handlers and more. But if you are going to code your own ActionScript you will also need to know how to test and debug your code with the ActionScript Editor or Debugger.

Publishing your Flash movie is much easier with this new release. The authors discuss publishing options, export formats and how to test your movie with the Bandwidth Profiler.

This book meets the objectives for the Adobe Certified Expert Program. Andy Anderson is an author, graphics designer, illustrator and instructor. Steve Johnson is an author and founded Perspection Inc., a software training company. You can download support files for this book from the Perspection website.

If you are looking for a resource to help you learn Flash, keep looking. It is purely a reference book. While it seems fairly thorough, I frankly don't see that there is a lot more here than can be found in Adobe's help system. The reading is dry and mundane details of simple window operation are dragged before your eyes. Minimal examples and the absence of a tutorial structure make learning Flash from this book tough going.

This is a good book for an absolute beginner who wants to make simple motion graphics.

I had trouble finding anything in here that wasn't in Flash 5 or MX.

Excellent book. I found this book hits the essential of each feature in a succinct and comprehensive way. Very complete desktop reference. I use it every day.

Excellent resource for beginning to advanced Flash topics. I MUST have to keep on your book shelf. Needed for class and had to order eleswhere due to Amazon being SO SLOW to ship. Why does Amazon wait two weeks before they even ship an order if they really (??) have it in stock?