Customer Reviews

Flash 3! Creative Web Animation

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

i think the people trashing this book should get thier heads examined at once...this book acomplishes its task ...IT TEACHES A PERSON WHO DOESNT KNOW FLASH HOW TO BEGIN TO USE IT!!! HELLO?!!?!?!? if you already know how to use flash and you want to learn advanced techniques and tricks then go out and buy that flash FX book..this book is a great reference for anyone who doesnt know flash....i myself am a web designer i work for a top company and this book got me started with the program....im doing my own tricks and effects..without help from a book..the people who hate this book must just be stupid or smoking something some sort of illegal substance NUFF SAID!

This book does a very good job of teaching you how to program in Flash . . I was impressed with the way it lays down the controls and how it goes about showing you how to manipulate text and graphics. All-in-All a very good book to learn Flash programming from.

I can only say this book provided much needed information at just the right time for me. I just purchased Flash 3.0, read through the User Guide, visited the Macromedia Web Site, and worked through the Flash 3.0 on-disc lessons. Still, much of Flash's basics seemed obscure to me. Once I opened Darrel Plant's book--and began working through the lessons--the basics started to jell.

The book covers importing vector art from other apps such as Adobe Illustrator. It does a nice job covering the Flash drawing tools (make sure to supplement this with Macromedia's on-disc tour of the drawing tools). Overlays and symbols are explained. Frames and layers are clearly covered and "tweening" examples and exercises help the reader understand Flash's animation capabilities.

The book finishes with chapters about Actions (Flash and the Web, Button Effects, and Complex Actions), Sound, Delivering Movies, and a great set of Appendices covering transmission speed, HTML tag references applicable to Flash, Browser Scripting & Shockwave Flash Movies, Using Aftershock for automatically generating HTML code, etc.

Sure, it may not be on par with Adobe's excellent "Classroom in a Book" series, but how books are? If you're already well versed in Flash, or gleaned all you needed from Macromedia Flash's on-disc lessons, then this book may be a disappointment.

Nevertheless, this book was fun to work through and provided much needed information and guidance for this novice. Thanks, Darrel Plant for writing one of the few "tutorial oriented" books about Macromedia Flash 3.0 that I've been able to find.

I like the job of Darrel Plant, but for the excellents capacities of Darrel, i see that his book about Flash is very short in the explaning of advance concepts as FS Commands and Actions, for example. The user must experiment by himself without the help of the book. Anyway, is a excellent job. Thanks Darrel. See you in Flash 4!: creative web animation ;)

This book is great for learning more intricate tricks once you've learned the basics. I already had been using the application and was hesitant because of other reviews, but found this book has great examples for furthering the understanding of the program. I highly recommend it.

I can only say this book provided much needed information at just the right time for me. I just purchased Flash 3.0, read through the User Guide, visited the Macromedia Web Site, and worked through the Flash 3.0 on-disc lessons. Still, much of Flash's basics seemed obscure to me. Once I opened Darrel Plant's book--and began working through the lessons--the basics started to jell.

The book covers importing vector art from other apps such as Adobe Illustrator. It does a nice job covering the Flash drawing tools (make sure to supplement this with Macromedia's on-disc tour of the drawing tools). Overlays and symbols are explained. Frames and layers are clearly covered and "tweening" examples and exercises help the reader understand Flash's animation capabilities.

The book finishes with chapters about Actions (Flash and the Web, Button Effects, and Complex Actions), Sound, Delivering Movies, and a great set of Appendices covering transmission speed, HTML tag references applicable to Flash, Browser Scripting & Shockwave Flash Movies, Using Aftershock for automatically generating HTML code, etc.

Sure, it may not be on par with Adobe's excellent "Classroom in a Book" series, but how books are? If you're already well versed in Flash, or gleaned all you needed from Macromedia Flash's on-disc lessons, then this book may be a disappointment.

Nevertheless, this book was fun to work through and provided much needed information and guidance for this novice. Thanks, Darrel Plant for writing one of the few "tutorial oriented" books about Macromedia Flash 3.0 that I've been able to find.

This book was clear and concise. It enabled me to design vector based aniumations within minutes of the first few chapters. Within no time, I was creating visual effects for my web page, I was pleased. And still am.. If you want to learn Flash to the extreme, get this book.

I only say "supplement" because any author of a book on Macromedia tools must be able to provide something the user can't get for free elsewhere (and this is quite a task, since Macromedia's online documentation is robust, and is updated often).

Darrel Plant's book is VERY easy to read and understand. But specifically, allow me to judge the book for what it claims to provide:

"... you'll be animating your web site in a Flash! ..." [front cover]

No fasle advertising here. Sure, Flash accomplishes a lot in a little time; but this book provides a wonderful overview of navigating in Flash.

"...follow step-by-step tutorials ..." [back cover]

They should've included the words "easy-to-follow" to this claim. At times I thought it was a bit TOO simplistic, but I felt like there's enough MEAT to warrant the price -- $30 bucks in the US.

What more could you ask for? A 15-page index, by far the most exhaustive for a web application book I've ever seen, is also included.

I bought this book, plus PeachPit's Visual QuickStart on Macromedia Fireworks (also a fine guide, but not the calibur of Plant's book).

This book is such a disappointment... swf and Flash are supposed to get the web out of old, static html, and the program itself is a pioneer in that revolution. There is nothing "creative" in this book, the author has a reaaaaally boring style of writing, and the accompanying CD and illustrations are so cheesy that I always laugh when I remember a hippy guy from a chapter # 7 or something. However, this book DOES get you started in learning how to use Flash and it DOES cover basics. Overall, it was a disappointment. There are many, many tutorials on the net that have "real life" tutorials and people who actually use Flash on their web pages (including me) on a daily basis. if you buy this book , it won't be a total waste of money, but it won't be a great deal either.

I bought this book in february from amazon.com. It starts out good and explains the tools very good. But after page 123 (Animation)I started getting confused and didnt understand why. I think the author was put under pressure by the editors from this point because you really notice that the explanations get poor and the examples get complicated without you knowing what and why you are doing certain actions. I read the reviews and bought this book, even knowing about the bad credits it got. I thought: well learning a software is not everyones thing. some people have the logical side and some have the creativ side and so on. I am a webdesigner and owe a company with 15 webdesigners. I have NEVER EVER READ SUCH RUBBISH. I have NEVER EVER SEEN SUCH RUBBISH EXAMPLES AND I HAVE NEVER EVER SEEN SUCH POOR GRAHIC EXAMPLES ON THE CD. If you want to waste your money send it to me. Ill give you the book for half price. Pliks