Customer Reviews

Foundation Macromedia Flash MX 2004

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you want a beginners guide to learning Flash, this is a good one. Explains steps in detail, and rather clearly. There are a few frustrating errata, but they are well documented on the publishers website. If you are looking for a reference text rather than a hold-my-hand guide, look elsewhere. I rate this 4/5 stars.

I purchased this book to learn the latest OOP programming techniques available in Flash MX 2004. However, the author spent the bulk of each chapter explaining how to do something using techniques appropriate to versions prior to MX 2004, then made a statement about there was a better way to do it. He then spent very little time telling you what to modify to make it more OOP oriented or more efficient. You can't skip ahead and just look at the "better way" since all explanations of the "better way" were based on modifications to the original example.

Obviously, the author just did a "quickie" upgrade of a previous version of this book so he could sell more copies. I don't need to waste my time learning how to do something the hard/inefficient way. With the cost of the book, the author should have written a new version appropriate to the upgrades made under MX 2004 to support OOP instead of just adding a few OOP comments here and there to a previous version of the book.

Avoid this book if you want to learn good OOP techniques!

This is exactly the book I needed, as a complete beginner in website design and Flash. The book makes NO assumptions of prior knowledge. If you find this sort of thing as intimidating as I do, you should buy this book.

If ever you wanted to learn Flash® the quick and simple way, THIS BOOK IS IT!!
It'll be your bestest buddy from start to finish. And don't let the thickness of "Beaker" (yep, I gave it a name) put you off ... if you're like me and you have extensive knowledge of Illustrator®, Photoshop®, GoLive®, plus the now defunct LiveMotion®, and all their terminologies, you can be forgiven for skipping certain sections.
Flash® is here to stay and, from what I am hearing, it gets even easier to use with each product update.
Come on. Jump on board! You wont regret it!