Customer Reviews

Foundation PHP for Flash

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The premise of "PHP for Flash" is very, very exciting -- creating dynamic front-ends for the server side applications PHP and MySQL that makes simple HTML look awfully dull. To empower Flash with these open source technologies is unlike anything you've tried before -- it's a jolt of energy that gives new life to how you look at Flash, and gives fresh new ideas for your work.

That said, "PHP for Flash" does an excellent job of gearing it's perspective toward Flash developers with little to no experience in PHP. You're expected to know a little ActionScript, and if you do, PHP is very easy to pick up. They're very, very close in style and function.

Each chapter contains a project that integrates a simple Flash movie with PHP, whether it's a mailing list, an email form, a forum, a message board, a login/password app, etc.

But let's be clear about this book's purpose >> This is NOT a book to pick up if you're looking for new creative ideas in Flash. It IS a great book if you already have ideas, and want to empower them with everything PHP has to offer.

It may sound odd, but "PHP for Flash" is not a recommended book if you want to learn PHP, or even Flash and/or ActionScript. Other books, like "PHP and MySQL Web Development" and Colin Moock's "ActionScript: The Definitive Guide" are much better suited for a more well-rounded study of the aforementioned.

"PHP for Flash" is quite valuable however, for it fills the void between the two -- the glue that marries PHP and ActionScript together. You may know ActionScript, or even PHP, but unless you know how to create a manager between the two that both Flash and PHP can understand, you're lost.

This book gives great information about how Flash passes variables to PHP, and vice-versa, that you can't find in any other book. That alone makes "PHP for Flash" essential to making PHP and Flash work together.

And one more thing >> I mentioned MySQL earlier. The first chapter in the book shows a pretty powerful example of Flash married with PHP/MySQL. But MySQL isn't picked up again until the last two chapters of the book. Everything inbetween is PHP and Flash only.

That's great for novices, for you can get your feet wet with PHP first, and then see later how the addition of MySQL can really take you projects higher.

If you want to make your Flash sites more intuitive, intelligent, and responsive to user input, by all means pick this up.

This book would be most useful to the Flash developer who has basically no programming experience. While the idea is good - and I always love to see PHP getting some attention - the material is VERY foundational.

My expectations were a book highlighting how to blend PHP and Flash. To some extent I guess the book does that. But unfortunately there just isn't alot to it. It equates to about two lines of text: "Export variable to PHP, Import variable to Flash" - of course with the slightly more technical explanation to make it work.

If you are looking for the technical "know-how" of how to make PHP and Flash talk you would be better served searching the net. About 15 - 20 minutes of research and you will be able to cull the total technical information offered in this book.

If you know zilch about programming, and want to see some cute examples of how you might use this - enjoy!

This book is a GREAT way to join PHP/MySQL and Flash. It has helped me tremendously. I highly recommend it... But better than that... I had a problem with some code of a small project I was working on, and it just wasn't working.. I tried the Flash message boards, and a few people tried to help, but the code still wasn't working..I decided, what the heck? I'll try emailing the author of this great book for help. I emailed him my PHP code, my objective, my Flash Actionscript code. and a url to view. Within 10 minutes, he replied with a clear precise answer to the problem! Not only that, he was very friendly, and offered help if I need it in the future! WOW! That is customer satisfaction! BUY THE BOOK! I can't say enough good things about it or about the author! Thanks Steve!

This book is the BEST resource on this subject to date, bar none that I have come across-and believe me when I tell you I have spent countless hours trying to teach myself PHP/Flash/MySql by reading books, searching tutorials on web sites, picking apart code and so on. The book contains valuable, working, practical examples that should find good use in any professional or budding professional's bag of tricks. Examples include a client updateable content management system, login/password, dynamic News, Refer-a-friend script, Flash message board with L/P, events calendar, how to set and retrieve cookies in Flash, mailing list and so much more.
The author, Steve Webster, does a great work of explaining how everything works, so that I was able to have most of the examples up and running within one hour of getting this book! He also responded to my emails promptly and answered all questions I had. Thank you Steve!
If you want to learn about Flash and the sever side of things--get this book. It will save you HOURS of frustration, and it will make you better looking too (just joking)! But seriously folks, this book is a gem. I give it 5 out of 5 stars!

When i bought this book I knew nothing about php or mySql, now I have a big project in hands almost completed with an interface that can monitor all parts of all my sites. The book its well written and quite easy to follow, if u want to understand how to have some real functionality to your site this is the book u MUST buy. Thanks Steve by the great job.

Good Book used it as a lecture tool for my Web Developer Class. So it worked great can't say it is an easy read. But has some interesting projects that are very pratical. Not a book for people who like pretty pictures. This is a very code oriented book.

This was my second book on Flash that I had purchased after absorbing all that "Macromedia Flash 5 Advanced - Visual Quickpro" had to offer. My prior programming knowledge only consisted of the ancients -- BASIC and some Turbo Pascal from back in the day. I also had a fairly good amount of exposure to Actionscript.

With that said, I think this book was a great purchase. Although at times, even I found that it could be very "fundamental" like some reviewers pointed out, but that word wouldn't be in the title of the book, if it weren't, now would it? And if I didn't have the prior experience with programming, then those "fundamental" sections would have been essential to understanding the rest of the book.

The concepts covered in this book help ease the way for unexperienced programmers to integrate Macromedia's masterpiece with a powerful server-side script and database. This book will help you add new meaning to your "dynamic" flash sites. It presents ideas in useful/practical ways and stirs an appetite to learn more advanced PHP.

On a scale of 1 to 10 on the level of Flash Advancement, I'd say this book could improve you 2-3 points worth. I would recommend you have a strong hold of the basics of Flash and be comfortable working with Actionscript before tackling this book. If not, the Visual Quickpro Guide book that I had mentioned above would be a better place to start for improving your Flash skills.

Because this book was written for Flash 5 I was a little worried that much of it would no longer be relevant - how wrong I was... *blush*

This book gives clear and concise explanations covering the basics and fundamentals of php and how to implement them using a Flash front end. With just a little tweaking, the Flash side of things can be easily updated for MX scripting (or just leave em as they are - they still work fine in the Flash 6 player...)

It assumes you have zero knowledge of php and very little knowledge of Flash.

If this is an area you want to get into (and why wouldn't you?) then this book is the place to start.

cheers

I thought this was a great book and a great concept: make Flash movies that actually DO something. The examples (and source code on the website) are reusable and practical. The only downside to this book, is that if you have any programming experience, you will get bored in the beginning. Having previous experience with C/C++, I didn't really want to read about data types again. Other than that though, it's a great starter book on how to feed dynamic content to your Flash movies with PHP and MySQL.

Pretty flash movies are useless, but combine flash with php, swift generator, and MySql, and you have a tool set that allows you to produce online applications that rival stand alone apps. Building html forms for the back end interface is cumbersome and time comsuming. If you are serious about producing any type of application for delivery on the web, this book is for you.
Two thumbs up.