Customer Reviews

Inside Flash (With CD-ROM)

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

 

 

Inside Flash is a wonderful book! I am amazed at how thorough it is, while being friendly and easy to understand. This book is an excellent choice for anyone who is new to Flash, but is also complete enough to be a valuable resource to experienced Flash users.

The author understands which aspects of Flash web designers need to know, and has done an excellent job of teaching those aspects. I've read a number of Flash books, and some explain various features of Flash, but leave the reader wondering how to use those features in real life web design. This book is a real world book. Each chapter teaches excellent techniques that can be used right away. It teaches basic techniques, but also teaches many exciting, advanced techniques.

Without listing the entire table of contents, some of the best sections include: Text Effects, Transitions, Character Animation, Sound, Menu Systems, Interface Techniques (drag and drop, custom cursors, sliders, scrolling text window, etc.), Web based learning applications and XML. And it teaches all of these in an enjoyable, easy to understand manner.

I am glad to have this book on my shelf. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn Flash or needs to advance his or her current Flash skills. To the author I say "Well done!"

The publishers of Inside Flash took a different slant from traditional how-to books. This tutorial based tome was written by a group of trainers from Fig Leaf Software based in Washington D. C., each writing in their specific area of expertise. The result is a well planned book with each chapter having the ability to stand alone as an educational component. The collection of tutorials build on one another with each examining in depth a facet of Macromedia's Flash program, giving readers a true appreciation for the complexity flexibility of the program.

This book is best suited for users with some experience with Flash. Both programmers and artists will find this book's tone to be engaging and informative. While it is sometimes difficult to make artists and programmers see eye to eye when solving a problem, this book's balanced approach to each explains why certain approaches work better in certain situations, giving equal time to each. Again, I need to reiterate that this book is not for Flash greenhorns...there are many discussions in this book that simply will not make much sense to beginners who are unaccustomed to the verbiage and functions of the Flash API.

This book is badly written and poorly organized. Many of the tutorials don't work-like making a mask using an invisible button. Important steps are left out so the technique will only work if you do some major debugging. Unfortunately this book does not give enough basic information to enable you to figure out the missing information.

This book is the definitive flash manual. It encompasses all areas including action scripting, camera movements, faking video and more. Very well written and can be used as a reference book.

Highly recommended.

Try to stay away from purchasing this book. The tutorials provided go along and skip over vital steps in the process of completing the tutorial, as if you are supposed to already know the in between steps. Me being a beginner with Flash, skipping over these steps in most of the tutorials left me sitting and wondering what I had missed. But going back and reading, I never did skip over anything... there were just steps missing in the text! Very Frustrating!! And the book's chapters are not ordered in the way that I would have like to have seen them. By the first few chapters, you are already doing action scripting. Not good if you're just starting with Flash.

Wow. This is the one I've been waiting for. Just arrived this afternoon, and I haven't put it down yet. The writing is clear, concise and accessible. The info is in depth - way beyond what I've seen in other books .... where have these guys been?