Customer Reviews

Adobe Flash CS4 Professional How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is WEAK. Get one in the top 100 series or the learn visually series.

By its nature this book is somewhat disjointed. It's OK as a starter for some very basic techniques but not great as a reference. It is not well indexed.

I was expecting more in-depth "how-tos" and definitely more on Spry. Save your money and buy the Flash Bible instead.

The author teaches a Flash Actionscript 3.0 class at a community college, so me being a student of his he made us buy his book. I found the book to be rather shallow. Even as someone who just learned Flash, many of the chapters were unneeded as long as you experimented and played around with Flash. Such an example would be the drawing tools, layers, and folders. If you already know some other Adobe programs like Illustrator of Photoshop you shouldn't have a hard time adapting; however, if you're someone who needs to be hand guided step by step this might be a nice reference.

I found many sections that weren't explicitly written, or, could have used a visual explanation. This book is really for the extreme novice, not the intermediate or expert. Even the novices might want to look elsewhere because this book will probably only last you a couple of months before you pickup the required skills. In fact I only used this book several times before switching to another.

Book Review by Pasha Parvaneh

I am a college professor and teach and write curriculum for IT courses into Print and Digital programs using Adobe Design Applications such as InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Flash. In such a changing field I need to keep updated at all times to be at least one step ahead of my students.

Last time I taught Flash was the CS version. Recently I have had a contract to update the Flash CS curriculum to CS4 for a post secondary college into Graphic and Web Design 2 year Diploma Program. First, I was very uncomfortable to accept the contract for I knew many things have changed in this application and my knowledge was too outdated. Then, I found Adobe Flash CS4, Professional HOW-TOs - 100 Essential Techniques. Well this book does not come with a training video and even though the information in the book is very organized and some of the steps or the result of the lessons are demonstrated and are easy to follow; this book is more useful for those who are already familiar with Flash to some degree. Personally I am very visual and prefer learning videos (I guess Adobe has already spoiled us learning their applications using their great videos). I suggest this book to be used along with the Flash CS4 Professional, Learn by Video.

The how-to books, the classroom in a book, they are all great tools and make using this wonderful suite easy. The books allow you to create in a professional way.

Thank you Adobe!