Customer Reviews

Flash Journalism: How to Create Multimedia News Packages

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

 

 

Finally a flash book that does not just show you how to make a ball bounce across a stage!

This is the book I recommend to aspiring multimedia journalists.

If you are a journalist who wants to go toward the online realm this is the book to buy, read and learn from -- I have always sent folks to Mindy McAdams' web site in the past -- now this new book she has done is even better.

Seth M. Gitner
Multimedia Editor
(...)

Very clearly explained for people who have no experience in flash. However, it didn't get me all the way to where I wanted to be. I wanted to produce an audio slide show that featured a) faded transitions, b) synchronization to the audio track, c) seamless loading on the user's end, and d) dynamically loaded content for ease of re-use. Although the book teaches a, b, c and d individually, it never puts them all together; the "final project" doesn't incorporate syncronization or seamless loading, and the audio-sync slide show it teaches doesn't have dynamic content or faded transitions. However, I feel well equipped to pick up a more thorough flash book to take me the rest of the way, and I'm glad I started with this one (a more general starter book would likely have covered topics of no use to me, like advanced animation et cetera).

This book is excellent. It has a mission and it executes it well. Its mission is to teach people to use Flash to communicate their ideas through images, words, and if necessary, sound. The book is structured with an introduction to communicating effectively followed by 10 progressive lessons for using Flash to accomplish the stated mission. The 3rd part of the book presents 6 case studies, real live examples of Flash in action. These case studies discuss the issue at hand, the approach that the designers, producers, and developers took to solve their problem, plus a technical tip that we all encounter when building Flash applications. An Appendix is included with additional information, such as preloaders, swf management, and video. The companion website takes this book from 5 stars to 10 stars. This is one of the best technical books I have ever read. It never looses sight of its mission. It marries technical technique to a functional objective.

An excellent book, and truly one of a kind. But since Flash has become an Adobe product, released CS3 and CS4 and most importantly the transition from ActionScript 2.0 to 3.0, this book is in desperate need of a new edition.

It presents tutorials in a way that are actually useful to journalists, rather than useless and overly complex motion graphics. However some very simple coding is now impossible with this book, because of ActionScript 3.0. I found it very frustrating trying to do tutorials in Flash CS4, and not being able to follow the instructions because of updates to the program.

For a journalist wanting to know flash, McAdam's book would be the perfect resource if it didn't force you to digress in technology more than 4 years. Until a new edition is released, I'd have to recommend lynda.com over this book.

A plea to the author... Please update! Journalist and j-schools everywhere need this resource.