Customer Reviews

Effective Web Animation: Advanced Techniques for the Web with Other

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

J.Scott Hamlin is on the cutting edge of Web graphics design and his book Effective Web Animation offers a new look and fresh approach to incorporating animated imagery. According to Hamlin serious Web graphics design goes far beyond the simple GIF animations of poorer quality and performance that just about anyone can create. Image size, color quality, interactivity, accompanying audio, and faster delivery over the Internet are factors that have led to new Web animation technologies. Are we ready to face them?

Hamlin lays a foundation for Web animation on the professional level for serious minded Web designers who must face new graphic design consideration demands. Hamlin offers detailed instruction involving the use of JavaScript, Photoshop, and Macromedia Flash and the results are phenomenal. This book contains many well-planned and beautifully designed graphic images and the tips and advanced techniques necessary to create comparable results. The accompanying CD features sample code, animations, demoware, and tutorials for further instruction opportunities.

Web animation is making a comeback and Web graphics design has become serious business. Hamlin's contribution in the form of this book is essential for those designers who want to graduate to a higher level of Web design mastery and income. Clients are wising up to the many Web technologies available to them and are becoming more discerning about how they spend their advertising dollars. Don't be left behind. Consider animating your Web creations today. This is must reading!

I have had the pleasure of reading some of Scott's other books "Interface Design with Photoshop" and "Photoshop Web Techniques", and found both books at the time to be the best references for artists like myself that I have been able to find. I picked this book up the other day based on that and began to learn more about web animation technique then I had ever thought possible, I was not wrong this book is GREAT! There is a huge amount of real world professional experience that has gone into this book as well a very useful sample files, and tutorials. The CD-ROM is logical and easy to use, and has a ton of killer information. The book is put together in a fashion that makes it both readable and a great reference source as well. Something that you don't find in most computer books... If you want to know about it, it is here. From simple gif animations to multi frame, cell style Flash animation. It even covers methods of implementation... Scott covers it all. Well done, another great book from the man who knows to much. J. Scott Hamlin.

Having already worked for a number of years with the Internet I was hoping this book would provide me with such information as "Advanced Techniques for the Web" (as the books sub-title states). What I found though was the book is a fantastic resource for anyone who is a complete beginner right up to intermediate web developer.

I was expecting detailed information on java scripting and Flash scripting however found that the book goes not much further than, for example, the handbooks and tutorials of Flash 4 and Dreamweaver 2.

If you are an experienced web designer/developer with a solid grounding in the internet and are looking for more than basic java scripting and flash scripting, this book may prove to be too basic. With this all said, this is a valuable book and many colleagues who newer to the web are gaining much benefit from information in this book.

5 stars for beginner - intermediate skill level

3 stars for advanced skill level

This is one great book! Picking it up and setting down in my usual lazy chair to read I quickly got a feel for how easy this book was to read. With beautiful pictures and easy to follow examples I quickly found it to be one of my favorite graphics books. This book covers almost everything you need to know about web animation, and best of all, it grows with you! As your skills get better the book explains more. From Gif89 animations to all out power house Flash animations that will make your site to die for! I loved every bit!

Effective Web Animation by J.Scott Hamlin is definitively one of the best web animation books I've seen around. The book is clear, to the point and covers a broad range of topics ranging from simple basic designs to quite complex animations. Each page contains step by step full color illustrations, frames, source code, and tables making it easy for anyone to understand the concepts introduced throughout the book. One great aspect of this book is that it makes it possible for beginners and experts alike to learn web animation quickly and effectively.

Effective Web Animation also contains a CD stuffed full of programs and samples for both Mac and PC platforms making it possible to start working immediately on your new web ideas. If I had to recommend a book on web animation to anyone it would definitively be this one.

This book is your all in one tool enabling you to let that "spirit of imagination in all of us" shine through.

For those who are looking to make your web work more eye appealing, you NEED this book. It's chock full of fantastic ways to spice up your site without sacrificing the bandwidth. Mr. Hamlin has done tremendous work, and this is just one of them. Get the book-you won't regret it.

After seeing live animation examples at NavWorks.com, I explored their links to other sites and found a reference to Effective Web Animation. Five minutes later I had ordered it from Amazon.com. The next day the book arrived and my work took on a new look and feel. Scott's techniques and tricks helped me cut down file sizes by huge amounts, speed loading times, and increase the interactive "touch" that makes surfing the web fun. Once you get used to thinking in his terms, your animation production times become shorter and more creative. A must buy for anyone serious about web animation.

Effective Web Animation includes an exhaustive survey of different concepts and applications used in the creation of stunning animations (interactive and otherwise) for use on the web. While other web animation books might focus primarily on simply making GIF animations, Hamlin's book gives a much broader (yet in-depth) investigation into palettes, transparency issues, optimizations, timing options and disposal methods, as well as methods of creating interesting and compelling motion. In addition, Effective Web Animation goes far beyond GIF animations, and explores the capabilities of combining GIFs and JPGs into new techniques that are controlled by Javascript, and it becomes clear how to decide when it is more efficient and flexible to use Javascript over the standard GIF format.

EWA really shines by explaining its techniques in an application-independent way, such that you understand how particular features are beneficial before you even need to worry about what particular software you're going to use. Examples are shown using specific applications like Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Flash, but it is done in such a way that you don't necessarily feel "tied" to those applications. Some examples show how multiple applications were used to develop one animation, which shows how you can combine the relative strengths of different graphics applications to create something more complex than any one application would allow you to create. The book "educates" you instead of "trains" you, giving you a good conceptual foothold to take advantage of your knowledge regardless of the application you happen to be using.

The artwork and animations featured in the book cover a variety of styles, and the case studies section shows off various types and complexities of animations from some impressive sites on the web now.

The examples in Effective Web Animation will help small web design shops quickly emulate many of the graphic effects used on most popular web sites. The cross-product feature comparisons will be useful to larger web development groups in making educated choices about the best tools for the job.

I keep this book right on my desk. It is a great resource that I wish that I discovered sooner. It is written in a non-techy language that is like having the author right there by your side. As a graphic designer, I also enjoyed the clean design and layout and would recommend for those designers who are being contracted to develop web sites. Five Big Stars!