Customer Reviews

Adobe Flash Professional CS5 Classroom in a Book

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

With the new recent version of Flash CS5, there are lots of new upates that Flash designers are looking forward to, mostly the improved ActionScript interface, better "bones" animation, improved text rendering, improved physics, better cur points for shape tweening, etc.

All the new features are explained in detail in this new version of the every popular Adobe Flash book. The classroom in the book series has been the defacto standard in learning Flash and all its new version updates over the years. This book is no different, the author goes through all the great new features and explains them beautifully and in great detail.

Table of contents:

Chapter 1: Getting Aquainted
Chapter 2: Working with Graphics
Chapter 3: Creating and Editing Symbols
Chapter 4: Adding Animation
Chapter 5: Atriculated Motion and Morphing
Chapter 6: Creating Interactive Navigation
Chapter 7: Using Text
Chapter 8: Working with Sound and Video
Chapter 9: loading and Controlling Flash Content
Chapter 10: Publishing Flash Documents

I really enjoyed chapter (lesson) 6 focusing on interactive navigation. No matter what web technology you use on the web, you always need a navigation system and this chapter really explains it well. The author first talks about the various methods flash designers/developers can create navigation menus with Flash and with other technologies (CSS and JavaScript) and then goes into the example that shows a really neat way of using interactive movies, invisible buttons and a little AS to create a cool looking, visually pleasing menu.

The author also really explains ActionScript 3.0 very well when needed in certain chapters. Its hard to explain some techniques in Flash without covering a little ActionScript and the author really explains exactly what is going on and helps the newbie on how AS does and works with the examples discussed.

This is the best book on learning the basics of the newest version of Flash (CS5) and all the new features as well. A great buy!

I'm pretty familiar with several of the Adobe Creative Suite programs, but I could never quite figure out Flash Professional, at least in the few times I opened it and tried to play around with it. On the one hand, it seems like a content design and animation program; on the other hand, it seems like it's a visual programming interface. Because of that, the timeline doesn't quite work the way you'd expect if you come to it from programs like Premiere Pro or After Effects. If you want to animate something, for example, you have to create what's called a "motion tween" and each animated object has to have it's own unique "motion tween" layer. Plus, layers work a bit differently than in other Creative Suite Programs like Illustrator or Photoshop.

I knew I was in over my head, and did what I always do when I can't figure out a program: pick up a guide. I think it's helpful to have a broad overview before really trying things on my own, because then even if I don't remember everything from the overview I'll remember what's possible and know where to look when I'm stuck. I've tried other kinds of guides, and found them to be useful for lots of things, but one of the best places I've found to get started with any of the Adobe Creative Suite programs is with the introductory guides they publish, the Classroom in a Book series. The Flash Professional CS5 guide didn't disappoint. This is a highly readable, hands-on guide to the wide range of what's possible with the latest version of Flash Professional. I'm still just getting started, but as a result of working through this book, I think I finally "get" Flash: what you can do with it and how it works.

They get you started doing a very simple animation to get used to the interface, then show you how to create original content, and illustrate the very important notion of symbols and symbol instances, then show the different kinds of animation you can achieve with Flash. Up through chapter 5 what they cover is how to do in Flash what you could do in other programs; it's not quite the same, but the concepts are similar and so I found I could fly through those chapters. It wasn't until chapter 6, the chapter on creating interactive navigation, that I finally felt I "got" Flash, and could finally understand why it's set up the way it is and why the timeline doesn't work the way it does in other similar programs. In a nutshell, the basic idea is that the timeline includes all of the content of an interactive Flash movie, and the programmer/designer can specify which parts of the movie to playback and how to play them based on user interactions. So a simple animation or movie is just a special case of what's possible with Flash.

I would suggest that for anyone who is coming to Flash from other programs that use a timeline, you would do best to start out with chapter 1 and then skip to chapter 6, to get a better idea of how Flash works to integrate animation and interaction, before going back to see how to create and animate content. In fact, I think it might have been better to organize the chapters that way, since once I "got it" in chapter 6 everything else was much more clear to me. Until then, with chapters 2-5 I found myself wondering why it wouldn't make more sense to just do the content creation and basic animation in other programs like Illustrator and After Effects. Now I understand why Flash is set up the way it is, and how it can work as an excellent stand-alone tool for creating designs, animation, and interactions. Subsequent chapters give more advanced tools for working with text (including dynamic text that can be embedded in a text file and varied while the flash look stays the same), and sound and video in Flash. They also show how you can program a Flash file to call up external content and how to publish the finished product for use on the web or as a self-contained program for use on a desktop.

Like the other books in the Classroom in a Book series that I've worked through (Premiere Pro CS5 CIB, After Effects CS5 CIB, and Illustrator CS5 CIB), this one is clearly written and straightforward. The instructions are precise and the clarifications are direct and to the point. Each lesson tells you what you're going to learn, it has you creating content that gives you a hands-on feel for the concepts that are being explained, and then if offers a series of review questions regarding the most important concepts. They aren't trying to cover everything or to give you all the little tricks for using Flash; but they aim to lead you from the stage of being a complete novice to having a pretty good idea of what can be done with the program. It was exactly what I needed to get started. After that, you are prepared to experiment, but also to see the value of more advanced guides that show different ways to do some sophisticated things with Flash.

I have spents hundreds of $$$ attending classes on Adobe Creative Suite software and these books are better than any instructor of course that I have attended. Save yourself $$$ and purchase the series of these books and learn at your own pace. They are very easy to understand and comes with a CD to assit with instruction. Love them!!

This is a good book to read through to get a review of Flash and some of the new CS5 features. It is most definitely not a reference book, however. I had a nice DVD with some video learning courseware included. If you want a decent book to run through some examples to remind you of things you forgot about Flash and the Flash IDE and get some exposure to new CS5 features, it is worth it. I would recommend getting it, reading it and reselling it. It is not the kind of book you keep as a reference, but it is worth running through once at least.

I purchased this product along with the Actionscript 3.0 Classroom in a book as I needed to learn Flash CS5 quickly so that I could use it to create an interactive application required for a university assignment.

This book gave gave a great introduction to Flash CS5, allowing me to become familiar with the Flash environment and many of its features fast enough so that I still had plenty of time left to complete my assignment. I found that the examples were clear, easy to follow and interesting enough to engage me for hours at a time without becoming boring.

My advice for people that are considering purchasing this product, would be to also purchase the Actionscript 3.0 classroom in a book. The reason for this is because this product is lacking several things which I considered important but were mentioned in the Actionscript 3.0 book (simple things like adding scroll bars to a textbox springs to mind).

My only other criticism of this book is that upon opening the pouch in the back of the book to use the CD I noticed that the disc was badly scratched. Inserting it into my laptop confirmed that it was scratched so bad that it could not be read!
Due to living in Australia and having a tight time frame to work within as a result of my assignment, sending the whole book back just to get a replacement CD was not on the cards, so I had to find a copy of the exercise files online.

I subtracted one star due to the annoyance caused by the scratched disc, this would be a 5 star text otherwise.

Simply go to the end of the Kindle edition, follow the link provided, install the download manager into your browser when prompted, and get all of the files that are on the companion DVD. It's as simple as that. I just went through those steps without a hint of a problem.

I am finding this book a very useful method for learning Flash nearly as good as attending a course.
The instructions are well laid out and detailed, without treating you like a real idiot. This is very useful as the application developers appear to have gone out of their way to place controls in obscure places.
Unfortunately I have come across sections where the intructions do not reflect what is happening on the computer.
In lesson 4 the Ctrl-Click to move the keyframe doesn't work and instructions for the Left Car are poorly organised and it was not possible to access the Color Effect options for this element.
This prevented me from completing the lesson fully and there was no way of getting support to determine why.
It would be nice if the publisher's website provided a means of getting basic support on such issues.

I searched a lot of sources including discounted texbook sites and this was the best value. It arrived super quick and in brand new conditin as promised. Love this and will buy again as we need textbooks.

The book takes you step by step on lessons included in the CD and when you get to the last page of the book you then know as much as you knew when you just started with it. Nothing. Well... almost nothing. I thought that after going through the whole book, I'd be able to build a basic Flash web page. No way. There's much more to it, unfortunately. And there's something missing on lesson 10. After you finish it you then test it in your browser and the scroll bar doesn't work. I repeated that lesson 3 times and carefully observed all steps and couldn't make it work.

The content of the book is excellent for beginners, but the whole book is centered on going through step by step lessons which use the sample files included on the CD which DOES NOT come with the Kindle version. I've been given a refund and I will buy the paperback version instead that does include the much needed CD. Until the Kindle purchase include additional downloads of the needed material, don't waste your time purchasing. On a very positive note, Amazon customer service was very helpful and prompt in responding to me.