Flash Out of the Box [Paperback]

Robert Hoekman Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2004

If you believe the sky really is the limit when it comes to creating unparalleled user experiences and applications for the Web--then Macromedia Flash MX is sure to be your tool of choice. With Flash, you can integrate video, text, audio, and graphics into distinctive and compelling web content, stunningly interactive and expressive user interfaces, and rich applications for the Internet.

Flash is all about helping you dramatically enhance the user experience. And Flash Out of the Box is all about helping you think outside of the box to get there--first, by diving into the Flash box and then becoming intimately acquainted with every nook and cranny of it.

In Flash Out of the Box, you'll follow and work with a simple box through a "day in the life" style journey. You'll study, use, abuse, and transform the box as you move through exercises that teach you the basics of Flash, and much more, in an entertaining, unforgettable, task-oriented fashion. You'll learn to animate, work with video, load external assets, draw, mask, modularize, and many other things that will be essential as you move into more advanced techniques with other books. It's just you, Flash, and the box, mastering each technique along the way and adding others in a fashion that will let you practice and learn simultaneously.

Most Flash tutorials you've looked at are tool-centric, focusing on Flash's individual features and how to use them (an approach that can quickly become tedious), whereas this innovative, engaging, and motivating book is uniquely user-centric. That means it concentrates on you and what you want and need to learn. Each successive lesson anticipates and builds upon your needs, capabilities, and questions as you evolve from Flash beginner to Flash master.

Written in a fun and conversational tone, the highly accessible Flash Out of the Box makes learning Flash MX 2004 intuitive, logical, and, most of all, fun.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Allen Noren is editor-at-large for the Online Publications Group at O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media (August 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596006918
• ISBN-13: 978-0596006914
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,466,940 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Hoekman, Jr, is the author of the Amazon bestseller "Designing the Obvious" (1st and 2nd edition), "Designing the Moment," and "Web Anatomy" (coauthored by Jared Spool). He has also written dozens of articles for web-industry sites including Adobe, A List Apart, Peachpit, and InformIT.

Robert is a passionate and outspoken user experience specialist who has worked with Adobe, MySpace, Dodge, Craftsman, American Heart Association, Seth Godin (Squidoo), Automattic, United Airlines, and countless others.

He has spoken to packed rooms at industry events all over the world, including An Event Apart, Web App Summit, SXSW, Voices That Matter, and many others.

Learn more about Robert at www.rhjr.net.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a quick starter, December 1, 2004

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Flash Out of the Box (Paperback)

As Macromedia has beefed up Flash with each revision, its capabilities have become very powerful and numerous. So much so that a comprehensive text on it can span a thousand pages. Which can be very forbidding to someone wanting to quickly learn enough to get started doing useful things. In response, Hoekman offers his book.

The blurb claims that you can come up to speed with this book faster than with any other Flash tutorial book. Take that claim with a grain of salt. A bit of marketing hype. But it is not totally unreasonable. For one thing, he avoids explaining every feature of Flash. There is a lot you don't need to know as a beginner. He shows basic and common operations. Starting with drawing simple graphics. Then doing animations. And moving onto imbuing interactive behaviour and putting in sound and streaming video. There are other tasks he goes into. But this should convey the essence of what he teaches you.

The book might be most useful as a companion to a Flash reference text.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Hands-On Style, February 22, 2005

By 

Stephanie Sullivan (NC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Flash Out of the Box (Paperback)

This book is succinct and personable with a great hands-on style. For visual learners as well as those who enjoy a more kinesthetic learning style, I highly recommend this book.

I'm a DW/CSS type person. With Flash and Flash video becoming more standard, I wanted at least a cursory knowledge of the program. But where to begin? To start with, I'll only use it for portions of pages and some of the huge books on the market are overkill for me... not to mention overwhelming.

That's one of the things I loved about this book. Hoekman really boils it down for those just starting out. There's no need to confuse the issue by teaching every detail of the program 'encyclopedia style.' He shows you how to get the job done using projects in a logical order. My 12-year old son was able to work through it as easily as I did (except for his tendency to jump around in the book -- looking for things that were 'cool.' Since the projects build on each other, I found it best to do them in the order Hoekman put them in).

I really appreciate his conversational style. He tickles my funny bone at times. That's worth a lot while learning. It was nice to see this style book come from O'Reilly.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent introduction to Flash, December 19, 2004

By 

Zubler Edoardo (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Flash Out of the Box (Paperback)

This volume is neither an omnicomprehensive guide to every single tool or panel of the Flash IDE, nor is a beginner guide to Flash scripting language, ActionScript, but if you are totally new to Macromedia Flash, and you would like to start working with it and being productive in no time (possibly without having to go through a number of tedious thousands pages tomes), then look no further because this is really the textbook you were looking for.

Having experience in teaching Flash, I've been asked to be a tech reviewer for this book, because I do know how difficult could be for beginners to stay motivated, putting into practice what they have learned, when they are just taught each tools by its function, without the essential support of concrete examples on how to take the most of the combined use of them. What I find makes this book the excellent beginners guide it truly is, is its being goals centric, teaching the tools only when, and for the reason why, you actually need them, and offering more details only in sidebar boxes, without interrupting this way the practical exercise. More than this, each chapter presents extremely clear explanations and concise step by step instructions and illustrations, and is written in a colloquial manner, making the learning process easier to people new to Flash's terminology. If you already master animation and drawing techniques, and you are more interested in programming with ActionScript, then you should look for another title, but if you are new to Flash and, each time you open it, you really don't know where to start, than this is the ideal candidate for being your first ever text about that amazing tool Macromedia Flash is.