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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent Book on Designing on Flash CS4, April 18, 2010
This review is from: Foundation Flash CS4 for Designers (Paperback)
This is a decent book on learning how to design on Flash CS4. While there is some Actionscript code interspersed throughout, the comments help explain the code on somewhat readable terms. (I loved the XML chapter, though!)
The book starts off with an introduction in using graphics, art, symbols, movieclips, and more in the Flash CS4 authoring environment. There are step-by-step examples that allow the reader to follow along and grasp such concepts vital in using Flash CS4. Then, the books delves into more complex activities, such as audio and video, text, and creating animations. Admittedly, I found the book's coverage on topics brand new to Flash CS4 such as Inverse Kinematics (bone-based animation) and 3D to be somewhat difficult to follow.
The money chapter is in the final chapter; it actually provides a couple of real-world examples of what you can do with Flash CS4, such as creating a slide show, a MP3 player, video controller, and dynamic loading. I found the chapter on optimizing and publishing Flash movies to be very useful.
One thing that was disappointing was its coverage on adding captioning to Flash video files. I found it somewhat confusing, especially using XML captions. I would have liked to know how to create cue points and how to create 'Timed Text' files.
This book provided excellent coverage on the basics of using Flash. However, I felt that it got a little bit more difficult when advanced concepts were discussed, such as 3D or IK. Granted, these advanced concepts deserve a whole book on their own, so condensing them to a chapter or two would be a difficult undertaking, I'm sure. I would have liked more coverage on Actionscript, beyond an introductory chapter. But, there's books on Actionscript, and the book's main focus is on using Flash CS4 from a designer's perspective.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly Recommended!, February 12, 2009
This review is from: Foundation Flash CS4 for Designers (Paperback)
I use Flash to develop simulation games that teach the basics of long-term investing in a fun and engaging manner. I needed to update a Flash version of one of my simulations that I had written in Flash MX or prior (can't really remember). I did not use Flash CS3 much and was intrigued by the new 3D features of Flash CS4. I wanted a book that could get me up to speed quickly while providing practical information on the new features. This book exceeded my expectations in that regard.
The chapters on the interface, creating artwork, symbols and libraries refreshed my memory at the same time they introduced me to new Flash tools. The action script chapter did a nice job of helping me transition from attaching script to buttons and movie clips to using event listeners and other aspects of AS 3.0. The animation and 3D chapters sparked a number of ideas that I'm now beginning to implement. I skimmed the video, CSS, and XML chapters and will return to these in more detail as needed.
As someone who creates educational simulations, I found David and Tom's book to take a very effective approach to getting up to speed on Flash CS4.
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Frustrating and Disappointing, December 31, 2008
This review is from: Foundation Flash CS4 for Designers (Paperback)
"Flash CS4 for Designers" contains a wealth of knowledge, however the inconsistencies between the book and downloadable files, as well as the apparent lack of editing made the whole experience frustrating.
Three of the chapters downloadable files refused to download properly from the first link provided in the book. The landing page of the second link stated that the book had no downloadable content. After doing a title search on the publisher's website and drilling down a few levels, I was able to download all of the lesson files. Or so I thought.
As I went through the chapters, I noticed typos and grammatical errors. This isn't a major problem until you start using writing action script or plugging values into to objects, and discover that it's not producing the desired results. I was able to troubleshoot some of the problems having discovered that some of the downloaded files weren't in the starting state that the book indicated. To help with this the publisher did include a completed file for you to compare your work against. In one case, I found that the completed file didn't match the action scripting indicated in the book. Since this was a lesson specifically on action scripting, the completed file provided was useless for checking action scripting on my working file. I do understand that coding can be written many ways to achieve the same results, however if you're teaching the "longhand" version of action scripting then the completed file should reflect the "longhand" version as well.
While a lot of the problems I encountered centered around the provided files not being available or just in various states of completion that didn't correspond with the text, sloppiness is the underlying problem for the book as a whole. As an unexpected bonus, you will learni trouble-shooting just to get through the book.
An important thing to note is that I purchased this book in mid-December 2008, and the copyright date on the inside cover is 2009. Perhaps the book was intended to go through an editor one last time pushing the release back to 2009.
I have written to the publisher to make them aware of the poor quality of "Flash CS4 for Designers", and they are looking into the problems. Hopefully, future editions of the book will be much more professional.
While I wouldn't recommend "Flash CS4 for Designers" I would recommend reading "Adobe Flash CS4 Classroom in a Book" which I read prior to this publication. It isn't as in depth, but there are no consistency issues to make the learning process more frustrating.
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