Flash 4 for Windows & Macintosh (Visual QuickStart Guide) [Paperback]

Katherine Ulrich (Author)

Book Description

Series: Visual QuickStart Guide | Publication Date: October 15, 1999

Flash 4 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide is a step-by-step guide to creating animated Web graphics using Macromedia Flash 4. This easy, visual approach to learning Flash takes the reader through the basics of vector drawing to the creation of animated multimedia files for the Web. Using this clear guide, professional Web designers, as well as hobbyists, can find out how to add sophisticated multimedia effects to their Web pages, without having to learn complicated scripting languages.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Flash is a great name for an application; who wouldn't want to add flash to their designs? In practice, Macromedia Flash 4 is a complex set of tools for creating animated and interactive graphics that can be played within most up-to-date Web browsers. Flash 4 Visual QuickStart Guide is a well-paced, thorough introduction to all that this powerful application has to offer.

The book begins by introducing the editing environment, including the toolbar, inspectors, menus, and timeline. From there it explains how to create and manipulate objects (graphics) and how to convert them into symbols (Flash's term for oft-used images) that can be stored in libraries.

It covers simple and complex animations, including ones with interactivity--from rollovers to movies with sound and conditional actions. Readers learn how to create frame-by-frame animations, use motion and shape tweening, optimize movies for playback on the Web, and many other key features of Flash.

As with all Visual QuickStart Guides, Flash 4 uses a column of text side by side with screen shots for every step. Readers can set their own pace by reading all of the text, just the steps, or just the illustrations and captions. Skipping ahead or reading the book in a nonlinear fashion is easy since each section recaps any previous steps that may be necessary for that lesson.

Flash 4 is a cross-platform guide, but there are minimal differences between the Windows and Macintosh applications; illustrations are used from either one or the other, but only from both when the differences are significant. This keeps the book lean; readers familiar with how menus look on both platforms will find it very clear.

Flash may not be as complicated as Macromedia Director, but it's not simple either. Becoming fluent in the application will require a few days of study. But with Flash 4 Visual QuickStart Guide, new users can get some basic animations completed in a few hours: a little bit of flash in a little bit of time. --Angelynn Grant

Topics covered: using the editing environment, including the timeline, stage, toolbar, menus and keyboard shortcuts; creating and modifying objects, using layers, saving objects as symbols and using libraries; creating frame-by-frame animations, animations with motion and shape tweening; using masks, movie-clip symbols, interactivity with frame actions and buttons; adding sound to movies, complex interactivity, including conditional actions; preparing a movie for optimal playback on the Web, including Flash Player settings; and publishing HTML for Flash Player files.

From the Back Cover

Flash 4 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide is a step-by-step guide to creating animated Web graphics using Macromedia Flash 4. This easy, visual approach to learning Flash takes the reader through the basics of vector drawing to the creation of animated multimedia files for the Web. Using this clear guide, professional Web designers, as well as hobbyists, can find out how to add sophisticated multimedia effects to their Web pages, without having to learn complicated scripting languages.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 442 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Pr; Subsequent edition (October 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 020135473X
• ISBN-13: 978-0201354737
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,556,231 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Format Appeals to Visual Designers, Content to Programmers, December 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Flash 4 for Windows & Macintosh (Visual QuickStart Guide) (Paperback)

Professional designers live their lives in $49.95 segments, shelves filled with 900 page "easy guide" books...companion CDs totally be-flattened by stacking and cramming. All because we couldn't figure out how to do just ONE thing... and felt forced to buy another book.

The Quickstart Guides are part children's book, part Swiss Army knife. Loads of screen-by-screen visuals to accompany every step, each with very clear notes and references. In short, a designers dream. Designers are visual thinkers and like pictures. And not just because we're reading to the left or right of a keyboard and using an old paperweight to keep the book open.

The Quickstart guide to Flash 4 starts at the very beginning and takes you all the way through creating and defining objects, animation and tweening, adding sound, fairly robust interactivity, basic labels and actions, and all the file formats to save and managing uploads/HTML/etc. It does not go into creating basic email forms or any of the more advanced actions, scripting and funky techniques that you'll find at Websites. But it will give you the confidence to master the basics, and the ability to understand and pick apart all those .fla files you will download shortly.

The only thing I found myself wishing for was a clear, concise overview of all available FS commands, what they mean and how they work. You know, in a nice happy grid so I know what to use with what.

How does it rate with the manual that CAME with the software? It covered more territory and was easier to understand.

The marvellous Flash tutorials online lack the simplicity and clarity of the instructions in the QS Guide, but offer wonderful and creative applications of Flash. The QS guide has the info but none of the examples. The two together, however, are a great mix.

Best of all, this guide, like all Quickstarts is around half the price and weight of most other guides!

43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Straight forward, for beginners and intermediate, May 29, 2000

By 

"[e-mail]" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flash 4 for Windows & Macintosh (Visual QuickStart Guide) (Paperback)

This book is worth every penny that I have spent. Like most of the Visual Quickstart Guide series from Peachpit Press, it's straightforward. The book give 100% pure answers and ONLY 100% pure answers to your questions without the lengthy, non-sense, and time wasting gibberish. The way in which the book proceeds in teaching the reader on how to use flash is unlike most books, it gives you the steps on how to complete a task (and each task it's pretty much independent of each other), in the form of step 1, step 2, step3, etc., you don't have to read the earlier chapters to order to read the latter chapters, this comes in handy when you just want to learn how to do one specific task. The book is excellent for beginners and it's great as a reference for intermediate users. I personally think that all technical books should be written in this way, because we're reading these books to gain knowledge and not to be entertained and waste our valuable time and this book wastes absolutely no time with me.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book for beginners, December 6, 1999

By 

David Byers (Arlington, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flash 4 for Windows & Macintosh (Visual QuickStart Guide) (Paperback)

This is a clear concise book for someone who is new to Flash. The intended audience is for the beginner to intermediate user. It does touch on some advanced uses, but will not benefit the advanced user in any way. The author did a great job with this book, and should consider writing a book for Advanced Flash 4 users.