Customer Reviews

Flash 8 Cookbook (Cookbooks (O'Reilly))

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

 

 

This book focuses primarily on how to use the Flash IDE to build Flash animations and applications, but additional Flash Platform technologies are discussed when deemed appropriate and within the scope of the book. This book is intended for anyone who wants to learn solutions to specific tasks using Flash regardless of experience. Like all books in O'Reilly's cookbook series, this book is not a typical reference book or training guide, thus it is assumed that you are already familiar with the basics of Flash. It is also assumed that if you are reading this book, you are most interested in Flash-based, authoring time, non-ActionScript solutions. For example, it is technically possible to animate programmatically with ActionScript; however, the non-ActionScript solution is emphasized in this book. It's possible that an ActionScript solution is either necessary or better in some circumstances, and, in those cases, the ActionScript solution is provided either by itself or in addition to a non-ActionScript solution. If you are looking for a book that focuses on ActionScript solutions, you probably want to look elsewhere. Thus, the vast majority of solutions provided for each "Recipe" are in the form of numbered steps that tell you which options within the Flash IDE to select. However, there are also detailed discussions in addition to the "How-To" steps for each recipe. The book starts out answering the most basic questions about drawing simple geometric shapes and proceeds on to topics such as interactivity, structuring and laying out movies, using 3D in flash, and animation. My favorite chapter is "Deploying Flash on Mobile Devices", since all published material on that subject is now very outdated. Amazon does not show the table of contents, so I do that here:
Chapter 1. Drawing in Flash
Chapter 2. Importing and Exporting Artwork
Chapter 3. Structuring Movies and Laying Out Content
Chapter 4. Creating Animation
Chapter 5. Simulating 3D in Flash
Chapter 6. Composing Images with Bitmaps and Masks
Chapter 7. Working with Text Basics
Chapter 8. Working with Dynamic Text
Chapter 9. Adding Interactivity
Chapter 10. Managing Playback
Chapter 11. Managing Movie Clips
Chapter 12. Creating Presentations and Slideshows
Chapter 13. Building Flash Forms
Chapter 14. Building Advanced Flash Forms
Chapter 15. Customizing UI Components
Chapter 16. Loading Images and Flash Content
Chapter 17. Working with Sound
Chapter 18. Working with Video
Chapter 19. Using Data
Chapter 20. Building Preloaders
Chapter 21. Publishing Flash
Chapter 22. Deploying Flash on Mobile Devices
Chapter 23. Making Movies Accessible

This is a book for beginners, not even intemmediate level readers. If you are familiar with any other design software like Illustrator, Photoshop, CorelDraw, etc. you will find that much of this book is useless since you already know it! This is a perfect exapmple, quoting the book:

"1.1 Drawing Straight lines

Problem: you want to create a straight line segment or a shape made out of multiple straight line segments.

Solution
Use the line tool[...], the pen tool[...] or the pencil tool."

This is by no means a "cookbook" and I'm very disappointed with O'Reilly being the publisher, since most of the time their books are great.

The book probably focuses on REAL ACTIONSCRIPTING up to 15% its entire content!

Only consider it if you never worked with a design application in your whole life and don't have the time or patience to read more than 2-page long chapters.

This is one of those books where having lots of authors results in a better value. For such a wide and still fast-growing field as Flash development, it takes many points of view to ensure that your own is part of the mix. In my experience, most tech books have one or two tech editors. This one had 9.

Finding a Flash solution is easy because the book's format is consistently Problem -> Solution -> Discussion. This facilitates homing in on what you need. The discussion is where the true learning value is concentrated for those who want to go beyond dealing with their current production challenge.

One important aspect of this book should be mentioned. The authors concentrate on Flash-based, authoring-time solutions. ActionScript is not the focus -- even though it plays a role in many solutions here. If you are looking for a focus on ActionScript, you may want to consider a different book.

With that proviso only, I recommend this book.

Flash 8 Cookbook
Joey Lott ISBN: 0-596102402

Cooking with Flash 8??

Reading the Flash 8 Cookbook is a painful experience considering you pay $44.95 for it. If you need answers to real-world problems don't look here. This book is a semi-helpful reference guide for those designers who are just beginning to branch out into Action Script. They try to make everything in the book very easy for you to the point that some of the chapters talk down to the reader.

The meatiest information is concentrated from page 200-340 of an almost 500 page book. Some of the information in this section is about fading movie clips in and out, the key word "this", working with Java Script in Flash, and adding event listeners.

This book features one of the best explanations I have seen on how to create a listener object and add an event listener on page 346. They break all the code down there with samples.

A bonus to reading this book is that you can download a number of great low file size components written by Joey Lott . Some of the unique components are the form controller, slide show, and window controller.

This book even introduces you to 3d Max and how to use it in conjunction with Flash. There is info on video and mobile but, surprisingly no chapter on Office Yoga for the Flash Action Scripter. They lumped together a number of topics that could have individually comprised a number of 500 -1000 page books.

I think too many cooks spoiled the Action Script in this case. I consider this to be an easy fast read. Great to take to the gym or the beach. If you had to buy just one book on Flash 8, this wouldn't be the one you would choose.

I am not keen on any book that has Cookbook in the title. This book however is more of a Hanes manual for your old Volvo 240. You will have lots of shop spills (coffee not oil) and dog eared pages on this when you finally move on to a future version of flash. Even then this will become a great tool.

The book has four main solution sections: creating content, building interactive interafaces, using projects (I never get around to actually doing that!) and adding multimedia and data.

O'Reilly put a lot into this book, with a load of solutions, with the if, how, why and here you go.

Best if your up to speed and know your way around Flash well. For me, its a matter of understanding and implementing solutions as I encounter them. "Damn, how do I best deal with that problem? - Dunno? Read the book".

Short and too the point, you will need this if your a professional - either from the design side or the programming side of Flash. Not much use to students, though educators should read it through and get up to speed to increase the amount of knowledgeable students coming out of courses (enough of the bouncing balls already).

Hardly any information that would constitute as worthwhile if you have a decent grasp of Flash. There is entirely too much elementary information here. One recipe is a small excerpt on how to create an invisible button by only putting content in the hit state of the button. Also, although the cover reads "Using the Flash IDE to build Flash animations and applications", it includes entirely too much information on Swift3D in a Chapter discussing 3D in Flash. The chapter should probably have been renamed "Creating 3D in For Flash using Swift 3D" instead of the misleading name "Simulating 3D in Flash".

Thanks guys for a great buy from the other side of the World...you guys rock!

This is an excellent book for anybody who doesn't want to dig around entire chapters looking for an answer to a simple question about how to do something in Flash 8.

As an intermediate Actionscripter, I find this book incredibly useful on a daily basis. It's well-organized and well-written, with several juicy tips and tricks.