Flash is Macromedia's standard for interactive vector graphics and animation on the Web -- and Flash 4 is the most powerful version yet! Now, learn Flash 4 in a flash from professional Web designers who teach through real-world projects you can actually view live on a linked Web site! Start with the Flash basics: drawing and modifying text and shapes; using texture fills, transparency, and imported graphics. Discover how to animate pages using timelines, frames, tweening and fading; then add interactivity with symbols, buttons, actions, and sound effects. Walk through the process of publishing to the Web, including pre-loading, detecting the Flash plug-in, and controlling server settings. Fine-tune your graphics with reshaping, intersections, and brush effects; build animated opening sequences; use transitions, forms, and more. Best of all, the book's projects are linked with a live Web site where you can see (and download) the same Flash effects in various stages of completion.
Lynn Beighley is a fiction writer stuck in a technical book writer's body. Upon discovering that technical book writing actually paid real money, she learned to accept and enjoy it.
After going back to school to get a Masters in Computer Science, she worked for the acronyms NRL and LANL. Then she discovered Flash, and wrote her first bestseller.
A victim of bad timing, she moved to Silicon Valley just before the great crash. She spent several years working for Yahoo! and writing other books and training courses. Finally giving in to her creative writing bent, she moved to the New York area to get an MFA in Creative Writing.
Her Head First-style thesis was delivered to a packed room of professors and fellow students. It was extremely well received, and she finished her degree, finished Head First SQL, and can't wait to begin her next book.
Lynn loves traveling, cooking, and making up elaborate background stories about complete strangers. She's a little scared of clowns.
