Customer Reviews

Flash 5 for Windows & Macintosh, Third Edition (Visual QuickStart Guide)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a decent book with concise, straight forward explanations of the features of Flash 5. It isn't, however, very comprehensive or detailed.

Question? Should I buy this book because it is first or should I wait for other books? . . . I believe the answer to this question depends upon your experience with Flash.

If you just bought the program and want to start learning, you will probably be better off with a more comprehensive tutorial book (there were several for version 4 which I'm sure will be out shortly for version 5). The Quickstart Guide does have tutorials but they are very short and don't include source files (no CD--no download site).

For the upgrade users. If you are an expert at version 4 there's very little in this book that you won't be able to figure out for yourself. For the intermediate users who have just upgraded this may be an excellent choice as it zooms through the program in record time!

I bought this book because it was one of the few available for Flash 5. After working with it for several days I find it one of the best introductory books I have come across for any topic. Flash is a quirky and complicated program, and there are times I would have liked more explanations. But I am so happy that the useful information in this book is not buried in pages of useless examples. This is not a book of samples, ready for you to copy. Nor does it cover advanced scripting topics very well - these could easily double the size of the book. This book is a concise handbook, and an excellent introduction for those that do not require a great deal of hand holding.

When I got this book I didn't expect much from it. I bought it so that members of my team who were not experienced with Flash could understand quickly how the program worked. Once we received the book I looked it over and was impressed with what I saw.

As the name implies this book teaches visually. Pages are divided in half. One column for an explanation in text, and one column with a visual example or illustration. Also, as the name implies this is a Quickstart guide. You will not become an expert Flash user from just this book. It is not designed for that. You will however, have a basic understanding of the program after reading and using this book.

One thing this book lacks are lessons. If you are a person who learns best from having mock scenarios to complete, this book is probably not for you.

Another thing this book lacks is Flash concept. Once you know how to use Flash, you need to know the concepts of designing a Flash site. You won't find much of that in here.

I must say I was impressed with the amount of space the author gives to the Flash drawing tools. She spells the first half of th book describing what many authors describe in a couple of chapters. Most authors assume you know how to use graphic tools, this author guides you nicely through them. Its not until chapter 8 before she begins talking about animation and tweening.

For the Flash newbie, grab this book. You will use it as an instructional guide and a nice reference tool. Other Flash users may want this book just as a quich reference guide.

Most of what is covered in the book are the basic things that could easily be learned through the tutorials that come with Macromedia Flash program. Even as a beginner, I find that the book is simply a repetition of the program tutorials that come as standard with Flash. It would've been more useful if the book explains more thoroughly how the basic programming scripts are implemented into a Flash movie through the Flash interface. In other words, how can I begin to make my Flash animations useful for the world wide web by ways of linking urls, publishing, etc. etc. The complex interface of Flash makes it tougher to understand how these simpler programming functions get implemented into flash graphics and animations. Yet, the book falls short in helping to clarify this.

The visual guides and the text work together hand in hand. Beginners need to refer to both text and visual guides in order to understand what is being explained. I appreciate the graphics accompanying the text in this book. However, without any CD tutorial to accompany the book, more visual guides would be useful to further clarify the text.

I had to buy this as the textbook for a class. At first, I thought a visual quickstart wasn't going to be good enough, so I also ordered an extra book that I thought would be better. But when I read this book, it was surprisingly good. It got me up and running much quicker than most of the other students in the class. (Granted, many of the students probably didn't bother to read any book.)

I came to appreciate this book all the more when I read the other book I ordered, "How to Do Everything with Macromedia Flash 5." In my opinion, this Visual Quickstart Guide is by far the better book.

Some of the other reviews say this book is not comprehensive enough. True. If you really want to get into the guts of Flash 5, you'll need more. But if you just want to get started, and learn a hell of a lot of useful information along the way, you can't beat this book.

P.S. Be sure to go to their Web site and download the example files.

In general, I feel that all the Visual Quickstart Books are excellent. I have a growing library myself.

With the Flash 5 Book the reading is easy. There aren't any long, attention-drifting-away paragraphs. You could look at the examples and experiment with them to fit your needs. For example, I used an exercise in Animating Color Effects to teach myself how to make text that fades in and out. The best thing about these books is that they are 100% proofread.

Yeah, some people complain that the books are too simplistic. I say to those 1) What more do you want? These books give a wealth of information for under $25 and 2) quit trying to come off as an expert user of Flash/Photoshop/etc...

The Bottom Line is that these are great books.

As an individual who possessed a minor knowledge of Flash seeking to learn more I found the book "Flash 5 for Windows and Macintosh" to be the perfect book. Whether you have no knowledge of Flash 5 and are just starting out or have a good basic understanding and wish to advance to an intermediate level this book is the perfect learning tool.

Flash 5 for Windows and Macintosh is easy to follow, very instructional, well written, well structured and chock full of information on the broad scope of Flash functions. This book does not leave you guessing about what is being taught, and even after finishing with Flash 5 for Windows and Macintosh it remains an excellent resource for commands and instructions that I refer to over and over again.

I highly recommend this book for anyone beginning in Flash 5 or those who wish to advance their skills to an intermediate level.

I bought this book because I needed to get up to speed on Flash quickly for work, and I have had a lot of success using the other Quickstart guides. It took me almost 2 weeks to work through the book in my spare time. If the author had taken a more concise approach, I probably would have been able to get through the material in about a week.
On its arrival, my first disappointment with the book was that it's very long (525 pages). This makes it more difficult to work with than most of the other Quickstart books, which are usually around 2-300 pages. I found many of the examples were redundant, and could have been consolidated.
I also feel that this book lacks focus. For example, Chapter 13 is about Scripting, then Chapter 14 is about Sound, then Chapter 15 is about Scripting again. The entire first half of the book is devoted to illustration techniques in great detail. Unfortunately, important subjects like Scripting and Advanced Animation are given short shrift.
Compared to other Quickstart books, I found the author's style wordy. Here is a sample step from page 372 that illustrates my point: "1. Open a new Flash document, or open an existing Flash document to which you want to add buttons." To me, simply saying "1. Open a new Flash document." would have been enough, especially this far into the book. Nevertheless, the teaching by example method is very effective. I found the illustrations and the tips sections especially informative.
It could also have used a better reference section. The only reference material provided is a list of keyboard shortcuts.
This book is for entry-level Flash users. For them, it should get the job done, though in my opinion it could have been more concise. Advanced Flash users (including those migrating from earlier versions) should definitely look elsewhere.

This book was created with the beginner in mind. I started out using Flash 4.0, then when 5.0 came out I thought I would buy a book on it. This was the one I bought and it was a waste of money. It shows nothing new between Flash 4 and 5. It doesn't go into actionscript and gives no information on how to put complex movies together. If you want to make a box tween into a star, buy this book. If you want to learn to develop an entire site, find a different one.

If you have no experience at all using Flash, this will be a good place to start...all the basic subjects of Flash, from the basic graphic creation using fill and strokes to tweening animation and publising movies, are well explained in the book.

The only thing that makes it fall short of an excellent book is the very limited amount of information and examples on Actions/ActionScript at the end of the book which might confuse some novices on the subject. The book doesnt cover the more advanced features of Flash, so if you've already aquired most of the basics, you might wanna look elsewhere. If you do get lost at the last few chapters about assigning actions, a good online primer on Javascript can help you grasp the concept.