How To Do Everything with Macromedia Flash 5 [Paperback]

Bonnie Blake (Author)

Book Description

Series: How to Do Everything | Publication Date: March 14, 2001

Macromedia is currently a red-hot topic in the web development community. Macromedia estimates that over 3 million computer browsers now have the Flash player - that's roughly 80% of web browsers - and in addition, Macromedia has an aggressive and open licensing policy which guarantees that millions more Flash-ready browsers are installed worldwide. The guide's "how to do everything" format simplifies this complicated product and additional content from the book, and images for the book's tutorials will be posted on their website. This product enables web and interface designers with little or no programming knowledge to create fully interactive and fast loading website elements such as buttons, menu, animation and interfaces. The book covers everything from building rollovers, to adding motion, colour and sound to text, to creating interactive drop-down menus, to building animation sequences.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Well, maybe not everything, but there is much you can do with Flash 5, and How To Do Everything with Macromedia Flash 5 can show you just about all of it. It's an excellent book for those new to Flash or with only some experience. Many concepts are well illustrated, using screen shots to help explain the technique. Each chapter begins with a bulleted list of the goals in the chapter, clearly outlining the targets of discussion.

For designers with some Flash experience, the sections on "Assigning ActionScripts to Buttons and Frames" and "Building Interactive Movies" are where both Flash and this book begin to really shine. Understanding object-oriented programming and learning to use ActionScript are vital talents for anything more than pedestrian Flash work, and these sections provide a solid foundation on which to build. Numerous simple examples demonstrate useful concepts that can be applied to larger projects, such as using buttons to control the playback of not only the Flash movie in which the button is embedded but other movies as well ("nested movie clips"), and using variables and strings in scripts.

While the book doesn't come with a CD, it does include some terrific features such as a 23-page index, and an appendix listing a plethora of Flash sites that offer developer assistance, code examples, and links to some of the best Flash sites on the Web. Each chapter is clearly written and well illustrated. If the book could make coffee, then it really could do everything. --Mike Caputo

Topics covered: Sixteen chapters spanning 500 pages cover everything from early planning and how it affects approaching the project, exploring the interface, and basic Flash principals; to creating and animating in Flash, creating artwork for import, using such Flash features as symbols, libraries, and instances; and on to animation techniques and interactivity.

From the Back Cover

Few Internet provinces rival the creative and commercial power of motion graphics on the Web. And no application comes close to creating Web-ready motion graphics, movies, or sound as effectively as Flash. How to Do Everything with Flash 5 covers the latest upgrades, such as compressing and transmitting complex elements like MP3 audio, object library features, movie clips, and interactivity over low bandwidth. Learn to animate figures, text, color-virtually anything. Whether creating Web content, business presentations, or publishing multimedia interactive content, this single resource will show you how Flash 5 can bring your presentations to life!

• Easily master Flash tools and get started on your motion Web graphics today
• Understand the functionality of this enormously popular application, and learn how it can improve your Web site
• Animate buttons, menus, text, and more
• Use scalable vector Web objects to facilitate faster loading and reading
• Add multimedia enhancements like dynamic content, forms, MP3 audio compression, object library features, actions, and more
• Learn the latest Flash technologies, including adding interactivity to your movie with ActionScript
• Make easy modifications to movies using editable graphic components
• Synchronize sound with your motion graphics
• Import and manipulate audio, video, vector, and bitmap graphics to further enhance your Flash movies
• Export and publish your Flash movies to the Web or to a self playing movies

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies; 1st edition (March 14, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072127147
• ISBN-13: 978-0072127140
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,132,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars There are better "beginner" Flash 5 books available., June 24, 2001

By 

M. Pincus "Mac-P" (East Meadow, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How To Do Everything with Macromedia Flash 5 (Paperback)

I can't really say that this book is "bad", although I can say that I did not find it at all useful so I returned it. This book falls under the category of a "project oriented how-to" style book as opposed to a "reference" style book (see my review of "Foundation Flash 5"). If you are a total beginner and are looking for a book to hold your hand while you learn new concepts, this book does that. You work on little "projects" that demonstrate different techniques and tools. The title of the book is a big exaggeration (you could also say blatant lie), as almost everything here is basic.

The problem is if you are not a beginner. This is NOT a reference or advanced book. If you have a question (about something simple) and need the answer to it, you can't just look it up in the index and turn to the page. You will find yourself on step 26 (or whatever) of a larger project that you'd have to trace back to the beginning and follow up until that point. Sometimes this isn't a big deal as nothing here gets TOO complex, but I found it frustrating how brief some explanations were and always closed the book and looked up the problem in one of the many other excellent reference books ("Flash 5 Bible", "Flash 5 Visual Quickstart" [1st & Advanced editions]). The ActionScript section is particularly light and glosses over many concepts without REALLY explaining them. You really don't venture too far from the "Basic" actions.

Again, to learn from point "A", this book has it's merit (although I personally liked "Foundation Flash 5" better). The price certainly is right. You couldn't really LEARN the program from scratch by reading the "Flash 5 Bible" or any other "reference" book. You would probably want a project oriented "how-to". I didn't like this one. And for what it's worth, the picture on the cover of the annoying clean-cut boy with the lipstick irritated me to no end as it is also the 1st page of every chapter. Puleese! Isn't Flash about graphics? Add a half star if cornyness doesn't bother you.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How To Do Everything with Macromedia Flash 5, April 21, 2001

By 

Anna Lawrinenko (Vineland, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How To Do Everything with Macromedia Flash 5 (Paperback)

This is by the far the best book on the market today covering concepts that are clearly explained, with examples that precisely illustrate the "how to" and "why" things are done. It covers pertinent information for the avid Flash professional and makes for a handy reference manual, aside from the fact that it's a "must have" for the Flash beginner as well. This book is extremely well written and its coverage of the object oriented ActionScript is filled with examples that make its concepts easy to grasp. Finally, a book that sticks to Flash and isn't crammed with hundreds of pages of topics that have nothing to do with Flash or its concepts.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a gem in a haystack, March 30, 2001

By 

Mary Cicitta (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How To Do Everything with Macromedia Flash 5 (Paperback)

This book is outstanding. Not only does the author write in laymen's terms but she also explains with detail those features of Flash which are most pertinent to the end user. It's easy to understand the functionality of this popular and powerful program in the hands of Bonnie Blake. Her graphics background clearly comes into play with this book and enhances the readability for those designers out there.Her style is easy-going and easy-flowing and her humor is injected in just the right places and right ways to make this heavy subject simple to digest and use. Thank you, Bonnie, for the gem that stands out as one-of-a-kind in the haystack of too many mediocre books written on Flash!