Customer Reviews

Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Classroom in a Book

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I purchased this book in order to get more insight on all the features of Flash Professional. I wasn't disappointed. I thought the chapters were well organized. And everything worked the way the book said it would. Just follow the directions and you should do well.

Once you finish this book, get a copy of Action Script 3.0 for Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Classroom in a Book.

I'm using the Adobe Flash CS4 Classroom in a Book to learn Flash CS4 from scratch. The lessons are very good and very helpful, but I gave it a 4 / 5 because it is riddled with errors that should have been caught during editing. I don't mean proofreading errors, but rather substantive errors that a copy editor who is reading for understanding should be able to catch. It sometimes makes things a bit more confusing, but I've been able to understand what was meant, so not a big problem.

I like that the lessons are all explained through very helpful full color screenshots, so as a guide, I do recommend this book very much, but just hope that in the future Adobe works harder on the editing aspect of their text publishing.

Any seeking to learn Adobe Flash CS4 Professional will find key to such learning the Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Classroom in a Book. It comes from Adobe and covers all the basics of learning CS4 Professional, offering tips, techniques, and color photos throughout. While it will be of value to any lending library strong in computer courses, it's especially recommended for self-instruction in Adobe Flash CS4: as a step-by-step learner's primer, it can't be beat.

This seems like a reasonably well organized and easily read book, but there is nowhere to go to download the lesson files which are an INTEGRAL part of the learning experience. Not only that, but there's nowhere to go to complain about it. Except here, of course. Which is going to do me and nobody else any good.

If you want to learn Flash CS4, this is a great resource. The lessons are well organized and detailed; they are easy to follow, with step-by-step instructions for each lesson.

It was a pleasure to work through the book and I highly recommend it to anyone without any Flash experience. Please note, It does NOT include much about ActionScript, but there are additional books dedicated to ActionScript programming if you're interested. ActionScript 3.0 for Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Classroom in a Book

This is a great book for learning the flash application. It goes over many of the features that you need to know in order to work with the application. My desire was to learn Flash to implement it within websites (as I believe most people would use it for) so I wish it covered website implementation more directly. There are a few chapters on it but I would have wanted more of a beginning to end case study. Other than that it's a great book to learn the Flash application.

I thought it would be helpful to warn other customers that if you buy the Kindle edition of an Adobe Classroom in a Book which deals with software versions older than CS5 (the current version at the time of this review), you may not be able to obtain the project files that are supposed to come with the book. I discovered this when I bought the CS4 Flash book and one of my co-workers told me he had the same problem with other CS4 Kindle editions (we still use CS4 versions of some Adobe products where we work). After some searching online, it appears there's no way to obtain the older project files without buying the paper edition (which comes with the files on a CD). CS5 Kindle editions do contain links to downloadable project files, but the older books appear to have their links stripped out, which probably means the project files for those versions have been removed from the publisher's server. It's likely that at least some of the CS5 project files are different enough that they won't be useful to users of the CS4 or CS3 books. I haven't checked all of the CS4 and CS3 books out personally, but I'm posting this warning so that other buyers will be aware of the risk.

This book is the right start for the beginners, Iam not Flash beginner, although i want a book to learn the new features in Flash CS4, and the book is great for such a mission and refresh my brain about all things i know, it follow the Classroom in a book sereies style, you'll learn the fundamentals concepts and features you'll need to use the program with step by step illustration and a lot of instructions and figures and it did not assume that you used flash before, and then it dive into the new Flash CS4 features such as working in 3D, and making articulated motion and working with inverse kinematics, after all the book is great and i recommend it to anyone want to learn flash and begin animation .

I bought many Adobe press books and impressed with Photo shop CS4 and Illustrator CS4 book but this book, Flash CS4 lacks of detail instructions and it confuses a beginner learner like me. I get frustrated and feel miserable.

I actually like this book and think that it is more clearly written and the fundamentals of Flash more clearly explained than in other Flash books.

HOWEVER, the Adobe Press website offers NO corrections for problems that exist in the book. For instance, there is a .swf file on the CD for Chapter 4 that produces a flurry of output errors when run in Flash. How difficult would it be for Adobe put a downloadable version of the correct file on their site? Conversely, the Flash CS4 Professional Digital Classroom book does post corrections on a page from which you can also download any files that were inadvertently omitted from the accompanying CD. Whenever I get a computer book, I make it a practice to check the publisher's website for corrected mistakes. What's the point of frustrating oneself by following incorrect instructions when the corrected version can almost always be found online.

Flash CS4 Classroom in a Book is an expensive book. They could at least post corrections to any errors, which other reviewers have also discovered, on their website. The bulk of the content in this book is worth 4-5 stars, but the failure to offer corrections demotes the book to 2 stars. It's Adobe, for heaven's sake. They know a thing or two about editing websites but are simply neglecting to do so.