Flash CS3 Professional Advanced for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickPro Guide (Paperback)

by Russell Chun (Author) "The key to creating complex animations in Flash is building them from simpler parts..." (more)
Key Phrases: controlling text, script assist, new font, Flash Player, Test Movie, Displaying Graphics (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Adobe Flash CS3 is the leading software for Web designers creating dynamic Web sites. Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Advanced for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickPro Guide offers the most efficient way for smart, creative, busy professionals to learn Flash. Updated to include the important new features in Flash CS3, this book covers the latest ActionScript standards that make Flash CS3 so powerful, and details the expanded support for rich media. This handy guide combines a visual approach with straightforward, step-by-step instructions and screenshots, concise explanations of animation techniques, and task-based learning. Taking the highly accessible instructional format of the popularVisual QuickStart Guides to a more advanced level, the book guides readers through all the intricacies and new features of this top-selling Web multimedia application.

About the Author
Russell Chun is a freelance educational art and multimedia developer, writer, and teacher. He teaches Flash and new media at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He previously taught at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and lectured at national and regional workshops. He has written numerous articles on Flash in magazines such as SBS Design and Macworld Magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in medical illustration. Russell lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Press; 1 edition (June 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321503031
• ISBN-13: 978-0321503039
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #345,368 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Move up to creating more complex Flash, June 20, 2007

By	Diane Cipollo (Editor at BellaOnline.com) - See all my reviews

There is so much that you can do with the Adobe Flash built-in features such as components and tweeing that it is easy to stop there. But Flash can be used to create some very advanced applications. It just takes a little ActionScript. Once you start writing your own code, you can move up to creating more complex animation, dynamic interaction and server-side programming.

This book by Russel Chun will give you the foundation you need to master advance Flash design and development. Like all the Visual QuickPro Guides, it has a task-based format with step-by-step instructions and illustrations. The author starts with a discussion of his approach to building a Flash project as a collection of components. Of course, he begins by discussing programming logic and the many built-in tools Flash has for ActionScript. After these basics are covered, he jumps right into object-oriented programming with ActionScript. Event handling is the back-bone of building an interactive Flash project and Chun teaches you how to code your programs to listen for events and respond to those events. He begins with the SimpleButton class and ENTER_FRAME event. Next, you move on to coding more complex movie control using multiple timelines.

The best way to keep the download time for your Flash movie to a minimum is to build a modular project made up of a main movie that controls several external movies. The author shows you how to do this by coding Flash to communicate with external files and applications such as a browser, printer, email program and other Flash movies. He also covers how to build a stand-alone Flash player which does not need a web browser and can be used for CD, DVD and other mobile projects. Next, you learn how to create, display and animate graphics and to add sound and video to your movie.

Server-side programming is needed when creating Flash movies that collect, display, manipulate and store user input. Chun covers the basics of using variables, expressions and conditional statements in ActionScript. In order to collect user input and display dynamic feedback to your users, you need to control text. You will learn how to code object-oriented classes such as the TextField and TextFormat classes and how to manipulate data with the Math, Point, Array and Date classes. In the final chapter, Chun covers troubleshooting and strategies for programming the most effective Flash.

You can download the supporting FLA and SWF files from the publishers website. Russell Chun is a developer, writer and teacher of Flash and new media. He has taught at Columbia University and City University of New York.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best for AS2 to AS3 Understanding, August 20, 2007

By	Dane Troup (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Flash CS3 can still create SWFs with Actionscript 2 and I noticed a lot of the books out there on CS3 cover how to use it with AS2. One thing to point out is, if you want to develop in AS3 YOU CAN USE NO AS2!! IT IS NOT BACKWARDS COMPATABLE!! If you are familiar with AS2 and want to learn how to update your code to AS3 this is the book for you. It also does an awesome jobs of easily explaining all the new features. Direct and to the point in a development environment with samples. I would also recommend Essential AS 3 by Colin Moock. He is the man and wrote a great reference (800+ pages) for AS3.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Reference Book!, February 4, 2008

By	Windy City Reader (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

As a new Flash designer/developer I found this book to be most helpful for when I needed to do something specific to my project at hand. The step by step details were good and the layout of this book makes it so easy to find what you're looking for. A great reference book!

If you're looking for a true beginners Flash CS3 book I recommend Flash CS3 for Dummies. Yeah, I know it's a Dummies book which some have hesitations about. I have to admit, I was hiding it at my desk as I didn't need my co-workers giving me a hard time for learning such a technical application from a Dummies book, but hey, it taught me in a couple of weeks the fundamentals of Flash CS3 and now I'm off to making great animations. The book is truly for the beginner and explains how Flash CS3 works in an easy to understand, non-intimidating manner characteristic of other Dummies books. This quickstart book was a nice "next step" book as I can pick and choose out of it the advanced things I need to know specific to my projects rather than be overwhelmed with information I don't need right now.

If you're looking for an ActionScript 3.0 beginners book, I recommend ActionScript 3.0 for Adobe Flash CS3 Professional by Todd Perkins. If you want to see more about this book, check out the video chapters on Lynda.com. It comes with a training CD to help explain the lessons etc. I hope this information was helpful to you!!!