Customer Reviews

Flash 4 for Windows & Macintosh (Visual QuickStart Guide)

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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!

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.

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.

Not only does this book teach you the basics of Flash 4, but it also teaches you how to produce advanced creations. It makes sure that you do not become lost by providing you pictures of what should be on the screen. The best thing I enjoyed about this book is that it gives you a detailed explanation as to what each action does.

Being new to Flash and having read through the manual, I was still a bit confused. Flash 4 can have you doing operations in different directions. The number of different capabilities makes Flash 4 a great program, but daunting to learn. This book kept me from throwing Flash out my window.

This book is great! It lays out in a easy to understand format how to perform whatever operation Flash has. The layout is easy to use, and well organized. It isn't an advanced users guide. If you're an expert, this isn't for you. But for the rest of us, it makes Flash 4 come alive.

Listen up all you web developers who want to energize web content with vector based animations:

This book is the resource for anyone who is serious about Flash and maximizing its amazing potential at a rapid pace. At RAYHAWK.COM we have been using this book to enhance our web productions and the results have been noticable, not only to us, but to our clients (KFC, Taco Bell, BMW, Porsche, Deltamedical.com).

This book is worth every dollar. Like all other Visual Quickstart books, it's straightforward and well written. It has the answers you crave with limited verbosity. The book teaches flash by providing the reader with clear steps on how to complete specific tasks.

Excellent for beginners and a great reference for intermediates we personally think that all technical books should be written this well.

The book is full of useful info and the author is fun and helpful. She assumes we have little prior knowledge with either Flash and by the end of the book, he teaches us how to produce some fantastic animations.

RAYHAWK.COM Web Site Design, Glendale, California

I think this is an excellent book for beginners and some of us who have little experience with other graphic tools. The visual aids make it easier to understand and of course visualize what is being done. If you are looking for a quick learning reference for Flash knowledge, I will recommend this one to you. Remember, this book is rated for "beginners to intermediate" not for the web geniuses.

Being a newbie at Flash 4, I needed a book which would go thru the basics, but at the same time not leave me with a "Is that all?" thought at the end. I have to admit that these VQS guides didn't impress me initially, why? Maybe because the title implies "quick and simple". However, I've grown to really enjoy the series. Like others in its series, this book is very affordable, illustrative, and packed with more than enough information to get you started, but not treat you like a fool...

I've got 2 chapters to go, and I can say that I've learnt a lot from this book. With many simple, but very useful examples, complemented with explainations and pictures, there's nothing else to complain about.

All I can say is that this book is a great buy. If you've just got Flash 4, then this is a must!

PS. The Photoshop 5.5 and 3D Studio Max 3 VQS guides are also very good!

This is a good book. The first 100+ pages were way too simple for the average computer geek. If you already know how to use basic drawing tools in Microsoft's "Paint" you're one up on the game. The book does do a good job, however, of showing you how different the concepts at work really are... and thay are different. If you're just getting into animation, presentation & the web... this book is for you. It WILL NOT blow you away with a bunch of words and concepts you don't understand.

This book is a great way to get started in Flash, especially if you're on a tight budget. The author is amazingly thorough. I would have liked more coverage on working with Expressions and Variables, but I can see how that may be beyond the scope of this book.