Customer Reviews

Flash ActionScript for Designers: Drag, Slide, Fade

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Do not buy this book if you are a beginning flash user. It is definately targeted towards the intermediate user who has a rudimentary knowledge of actionscript. I have done some basic action script in the past and I still found the book a bit hard to follow more than once...it assumes the user knows a lot without explanation.

There are also many errors in the book as well...take this excerpt from the "dragslidefade" online forum: "I too was looking forward to this book. It was a cool idea but it does contain an unusual amount of errors. These are things such as discrepancies between screen grabs and text, code errors and places where all three come together and you just get lost. Sorry but the book seems to have been rushed out without being checked properly. This should have been a primary concern - especially when it is aimed at people who are learning Flash 5 which can be a confusing and frustrating experience in its own right at times."

It's a nice looking book, but you know the old adage...In my opinion, the book is just not as "designer friendly" as it claims to be, especially if you're new to Flash. I'm sure there are a lot of designers out there who will love this book...I'm just not one of them.

Fantastic Book!

This book doesn't pretend to be the definitive, or the bible, or promise to teach you everything you need to know in 24 hours. Better than those types of books, it does exactly what it says on the tin! This book should definitely be in your Flash library

If you are a designer who has envied sites that show off beautiful fluid motion, and wondered how they do it, then go no further. Brendan Dawes reveals that you don't have to be a programmer, or spend the next year learning ActionScript in order to create interactive, fluid motion Flash movies.

This book was top of my list of new books to get, it is exactly what I want. Clear, concise, easy to understand explainations, delivered as if it is a friend explaining the techniques to me.
On top of the quality of the content, the quality of the book is great too! A lovely touchy, feely book.

Great, great, great.

Just what the Flash designers have been waiting for.

Perfect writing style for the material. The conversational tone is engaging and assuring while you are working with the coding techniques. One chapter-One effect format keeps you focused on understanding the relationships of the code segments described in each chapter. State-of-the-art graphic design is engineered through the insertion of code into a Flash movie. DRAGSLIDEFADE boldly illustrates Flash's transformation from a graphics program into a cross-platform programming language.

I just bought this book in Amsterdam at the Flash Forward conference. As a self confessed Flash/Actionscript book junkie I am really impressed by this title. Books on this subject tend to fall into one of two catagories - very basic or advanced scripting - Drag, Slide, Fade doesn't. It is squarely aimed at the designer who is comfortable using Flash and wants to know how to do cool scripted effects using their artwork and the software. It has a relaxed writing style and is easy to read through - well designed layouts help too. I've seen Brendan Dawes talk at several different events over the years and the title reflects his no-nonsense easy to grasp style. If you are a Flash designer looking to improve your scripting skills then this is the title to do it...

Very disappointed in buying this book as it has so many errors. For a beginner, it will be very frustrating to deal with. Very disappointed because I know the author is a Flash expert. Very disappointed that the Author, Editors and Technical Writers rushed this book out onto the market before testing, thoroughly, the examples in this step-by-step book. The only ones who will truly benefit from this book are the advanced readers versed in ActionScript as they have the knowledge to pick-up on errors. ActionScript newbies.... you will be very frustrated with this book.

Despite its flaws, DSF is an approachable, friendly text. Admitably, DSF is chock full of flaws in the code. I came to it with no previous programming skills, and limited Flash experience. That said, DSF got me going. It introduced fundamental coding concepts and de-mystified a ton of things for me. Frankly, I found the errors frustrating at first, but once I logged on to the DSF forum and learned that I was not alone (nor crazy), the errors proved to be valuable learning tools. DSF gave me enough foundational information that I could debug the errors in the book -leading to an enhanced learning experience. When the code failed, I was forced to go over it line by line and see where the problems were.That process made me learn Action Script better than I had expected. I had to work rather methodically to get through it, but in the end, I'm a better action-scripter for it. If you are looking for ready-made formulas, go to Flash Kit. If you want to learn, get a book -even this one and get down to work.

What can I say,

this book just blew me away. It easily sits next to Hillman Curtis' book as a must have for any Flash Designer's shelf. For the first time someone was able to really explain and interest me further into the nature of programming and more specifically, Actionscript.

I had always known that the real power of Flash since version 5 lie in its Actionscript but up until now I was a bit intimidated to say the least. I had done it, learned it, but for the first time a book made me feel comfortable about it.

The book presentation itself is absolutely stunning. It has some serious girth to it. If you were to glance at this book on the shelf you would see it has the same Widescreen Type format as the Magic books. However, the content in this book is tightly packed and dwarves the amount you find in those Flash Magic book. Heck, it dwarves the Flash Web Design books by the aforementioned Hillman Curtis. This book has the same amount of content as a Friends of Ed book all wrapped in a lingerie like wrapper.

In other words. This book is very tasty. *-)

Hate to be negative, but this book is not what I had hoped it would be. I'm an ActionScript junkie, and I find the greatest problem w/DSF is that it assumes too much, uses info out of nowhere wo/ explanation & often leads you down paths that dead end. EX: chp 3, "Coding the Slide Algorithm". The author tells you to check the x position of an instance vs. variable w/an "if" statement placed in a Frame Action . However, the code is incomplete (no closing "}"), and the later screen shot of the "complete code" does not include the "if" statement. So, what I am I to do with this code? Why is it there? It includes a variable that isn't even declared yet (bottom of page, 2 pages later), so what is it? How do I get it? Which totally detracts from the lesson. These questions and frustrations arise again and again...and you spend more time trying to figure them out instead of learning the uses and applications of the ActionScript itself. The author should have somebody proofing for copy errors, and someone proofing for AS errors and oversights.

As others have stated, this book has errors, and what's worse those errors are not even pointed out on the book's website. The least the author/publisher could do is keep the website up-to-date.

The good part is this book does contain some interesting effects with ActionScript, but this is not a book for ActionScript beginners. It is for people with either some background in ActionScript already, or with JavaScript. Otherwise, you will be frustrated very quickly. The quality of the physical publication is quite high with excellent paper stock, full color throughout and long book width. New Riders, to their credit, rarely produces cheap physical products.

In all, this book has some good meaty content, but poor technical editing to catch the errors mars its overall usefulness; hence the mixed review.

I got the book yesterday, and today I've already done things I thought I couldn't do. This is the first book that walks me through the code so that I understand what I'm doing and can apply it to my work. I also love that he explains effects I can really use.

I've just completed the projects in chapter two, "Drag," and already I've learned more about movie clips than I had in the last four months. Finally someone has written a book on Flash that is clear and interesting and, best of all, immediately useful.