Customer Reviews

How To Do Everything With Macromedia Flash(TM) MX

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I found this book to be totally comprehensive and very helpful in teaching me the basics of Flash. It also covers a lot of scripting material. It is organized in such a way that it makes it easy to go back and refer to various topics I needed a refresher on. All in all, it was well worth the money. The online files were a bit difficult to find at first, but they downloaded easily. Great tutorial exercises. Easy to understand.

I happened upon this review section after I bought the book as I'm now looking for a book on ActionScript. Had I read the reviews first, I may not have bought the book . I have to say, in my opinion (and I have many years experience in multimedia and web design), this book was very comprehensive, easy to read, fun, the download files were great. I was able to work through it quickly and now I am up and running. Easy style writing, upbeat, and yes, there was a typo here and there, but not enough to warrant complaints. Plus it was a good price for wht you get. I recommend this book whole heartedly.

I read the other review. The author skips important info vital to step by step creation of a movie. One usually has to stop and figure it out. I don't recommend this book for beginners. Instead of babling on, get a book that is direct and to the point...not this one.

This is a well thought out book. It addresses all areas of Flash MX design and development without getting too bogged down with a lot of geek speak. It's structured very well too. It doesn't throw too much at you in one hit, takes things one step at a time, all the while reassuring you that the point will be covered in greater detail further down the track (which it does).

For someone who had never touched Flash before, this was a great start for me; though don't expect too much depth. Despite the title, there's only so much you can pack into 500 pages.

Watch out for a few errors in this book though. This is the only thing that lets it down. There's quite a few, particularly when you get to the Action Script sections. This can add a little confusion if you're not familiar with this stuff and can shake your confidence in the book's accuracy. Don't be put off by this though; it really is a good place to start.

I would have given it five stars if the proofreaders had done a better job.

. . this book is so terribly written and edited that it was impossible to begin to tackle Flash MX with it, I don't know why I didn't check Amazon first. By the first chapter I knew this book was going to be useless; three pages into Chapter One she begins a segment called, "Get a Flash File Up On The Web". Now, why would you concern yourself with this step, in the beginning of the first chapter of a book on how to use Flash? That's the way the whole book goes. A disaster.

I got all the way to page 210 before figuring out that I wasn't going to learn Flash from this book. I learned more in 30 seconds from a YouTube video than I got out of a few hours of trying to understand this writer. Not good.

Do not buy this book, you will be throwing away your hard-earned money like I did. This book is so poorly written, badly organized and filled with inaccurate examples to follow, you will be kicking yourself for buying it.

The book is so poorly organized and written that it constantly introduces concepts on one page and then reference other chapters and pages later on in the book. You will waste more time trying to track down bits of useless info strewn all over the place instead of learning anything useful about Flash.

The aweful practice examples supplied by the author are plagued with inaacuracies and errors that will frustrate you and make you doubt your intelligence. After wasting time retracing step after step, even a novice like myself figured out that there were missing steps in the exercises that rendered these practice examples absolutely useless and beyond pure frustration. The author is obviously clueless about the subject and the publisher no better for releasing such book with such deceiving title.

I have since bought another book, SAMS - Teach Yourself Macromedia Flash MX in 24 Hours, now the author Phillip Kerman knows his stuff and the book is a joy to read, practice and learn. Take my advice buy Mr. Kerman's book, it is well worth the extra $2.50.

At its low price, for the introductory aspects of Flash, the best I found. Compact enough to reference quickly. There are quite a bit better books available at twice this price. Its useful to have separate references for the basic tools, and for advanced ActionScript -- as well as good links to the wealth of on-line Flash MX references and explanations.

As a technology instructor, this book is the new epitome for poor editing and unclear instruction. I have tried to execute their exercizes only to find that they are either unclear, incomplete or JUST PLAIN WRONG!

For a book entitled, "How to Do Everything with Macromedia Flash MX", they sure missed the mark. I'd be ashamed to have my name on the cover of this waste of natural resources.

The book is useless. I'd rate it a -5 stars if I could.

This is simply a terrible book. As a few reviewers have mentioned, the organization is atrocious. There are sections on putting Flash on the web before you learn ANYTHING about Flash. Early chapters continuously assume that you know subjects from later on. Many of the descriptions of how to do things are simply wrong; I frequently had to stare at the screen agonizing over how to make something work, because following the description did nothing.

Do yourself a big favor and stay far away from this book.