Customer Reviews

Learning Flash Cs4 Professional (Adobe Developer Library)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First I have to tell you that I have NEVER used Flash. We were in a meeting, and we were trying to figure out how to deliver a presentation on our construction company's portfolio to a tech-savvy client. I said, "let's make a Flash-movie slideshow with the photos we have and we'll e-mail it out to them". I said I could make something basic but still slick, in the 2 weeks we had until they wanted to make contact.

Again, no Flash experience, and I just committed to getting this important marketing piece done - now concerned that I might have been overselling my abilities. What did I do? Besides downloading a 30 Flash CS4 day trial from Adobe's website, I did what I always do - I bought a book! I made a whole stack at the bookstore, and sat in the cafe in the store looking through all of them to make sure I got the best book - the one that would make me successful. Some were very high-tech, one looked like greek, one was too cartoony and silly, and then Rich Shupe's book "Learning Flash CS4", the companion book to "Learning ActionsScript 3.0", just stood out. His tone was calm, the instructions were basic, and it included a book-long project with several major Flash components like embedded movie clips, kinematics, sound with controls, tweening. Pretty much everything someone might want to do, with sample files available at each stage from their website, to help check your work.

Any expert would say the book was light on explanations and detail, but when you are starting out, you need just enough to get it working, and you know someday you'll understand because Rich tells you so; sprinkled around are subtle encouragements like "you'll learn more about that in a later chapter, for now just do it this way" kind of statements. And at the end of each chapter there is a review, and an explanation of how what you learned fits in to what you are about to learn.

I am a learn by doing, learn by example kind of person. I dabble here in anything they'll let me try. By Chapter 6, I had an intro page, 5 icon buttons to navigate with, a short interval of tweened animation (a silhouetted airplane flying in - large at stage right, to small at stage left, as though it is flying in over your shoulder), two slideshows with their own controls, a page that launches to our corporate website, and an animated intro where our logo fades in, with a slogan appearing one word at a time, and then dropping stage right with an intro message.

Also, now I know just enough ActionScript to be dangerous from this book, but I plan to buy the companion book, Learning ActionScript 3.0, as well - it is a few months older, but ActionScript 3.0 is what Flash CS4 uses, so I can't imagine there is any issue there.

This book is just enough instruction to be successful and understand all the concepts, not overwhelmed with detail. The author speaks plainly but without condescension. You are encouraged but not overtly cheerfully. It gives you the concepts and assumes you will know how to apply them to your own work - just my style. I am not sure I would have been as successful with another book - this one was perfect.

Learning Flash CS4 Professional, Getting Up To Speed With Flash by Rich Shupe is the all in one Flash manual that takes you through every part of the current Flash program and its use for basic and advanced Flash animations for web developers.

Contents 22/25
Ease of Understanding/Practicality 20/25
Pictures/Illustrations 23/25
Additional Features 15/25
Total 80/100

Learning Flash CS4 Professional is not quite the all you need manual for the entire Flash program but it does contain plenty for basic programming and plenty of help to program Flash. The book is a companion to Learning ActionScript 3.0 if you want to take your Flash animations to the next level but for basic and main stream animations and video this book is more than enough.

Learning Flash CS4 does not go into depth for handheld device websites or other Flash features as it is just too big a subject to contain in one book. It does go through flash animations and website design using Flash CS4 so you can create your own Flash videos with sound and even webpages.

Learning Flash CS4 Professional will take you from installation of the up to date Flash CS4 program to the final publishing of your Flash animation to Dreamweaver or into a file. The book will walk you through steps necessary to create, edit and work on an animation, movie or video that you create with Flash to make your websites and projects professional.

While the book takes you through their project you can easily adapt what you learn or use chapters and sections for your own projects just as I have done. From first opening and organizing Flash you can easily get used to and familiar with the windows, menus and parts of Flash easily and quickly.

Learning Flash CS4 takes you from importing their project files just as you would any images or parts of an animation from your files or the internet and start to organize and work on a final project for a website. You can readily adapt the project they have to any one you may want to create as all the aspects and techniques they use would be the same for any given project you may want to create.

Instead of working on their project I went directly to mine and used their steps throughout the book to get my own Flash animation up and running. Using the book is pretty easy to answer questions, get help and as a general reference and how to guide for simple to complex animations and full websites based on Flash.

Learning Flash CS4 has plenty of helpful advice and does take you through processes like creating simple flash animations, developing movement for animations like robotic arms and even on to using basic ActionScript. ActionScript is the programming language of Flash and having a basic knowledge of it will help you understand and be able to use and troubleshoot problems in Flash better.

The book does contain enough ActionScript basics to use for simple animations and up to the more complex things like Kinematics or motion like that robotic arm but does not go into detail. For further detail if you need it you would should purchase that Learning ActionScript book but I found that this book serves well for basic animations and using Flash.

Don't let the inverse kinetics part fool you or worry you though, the book starts off simple and gives you detailed yet intelligent information about setting up and using Flash CS4 from the start. It goes through not in a step by step tutorial fashion but tells you all you need to know to get from one part to the next in clear language that is not dumbed down nor too hard to understand.

I had no problems not having a clue about Flash before installing it and picking up this book to learn how to use this animation program. I have never used flash before, only installed Flash player on computers for use in browsers so I know that this is good enough for this complete beginner of Flash to learn with.

The book tells and shows you all you need to know for simple animations and the more complex parts of sites such as animated text, sound and 3 dimensional animations. The book also goes along with the companion website [...] so you have a place to go for questions and help if you don't understand something in the book.

You can even see the project website as it is created throughout the book from this website so if you do not have a website to host the project on conveniently you can see in real time on the internet what the project looks like. The website is a real treasure trove of up to date information about Flash CS4 and helpful hints, tips and a way to contact the author for additional help.

Learning Flash CS4 Professional may be a bit intimidating if you pick up the book and flip through the pages, lots of code and several chapters with lots of programming language. The author steps you through all this from the simple starting point of importing the project files, or your own graphics and files, and moving on in a logical sequence that will have you working in Flash like a pro in no time.

This is one program that just screams manual required to do anything in and Learning Flash CS4 Professional is just the in depth and basic knowledge filled book to meet that need. If you own or work with Flash CS4 this is just the kind of book you need not only as a first time manual and guide but as a great reference to keep handy for those questions and problems in Flash that crop up all the time.

I highly recommend Learning Flash CS4 Professional by Rich Shupe as a great manual for Flash CS4 to really help you understand and use animations in your website.

Coming back to Flash after a five-year hiatus (Flash 5) and knowing how much it has evolved, I needed a solid introductory text to review and update my knowledge. Rich Shupe has given us a great one!

The clarity and depth of explanation, smooth progression of topics, anticipation of questions (at least this student's), and the general feeling of organic wholeness make reading and using this book a joy. Besides the new features of Flash CS4, I've already learned some things about core Flash concepts that I've never seen explained in any other introductory book I've read (e.g., a detailed explanation of how merged drawing's editing behavior actually works).

You can't judge a book by its thickness. This one is like a great tasting power bar--all the goodness and flavor without the non-nutritional fillers. For example, you'll find no long-winded "Click OK" step-by-steps in the tutorial sections. Instead the author treats you with intelligence and encourages you to experiment.

It's all here. A great book by a real teacher.

§
I've been away from Flash a long while. But all this stuff on the Adobe CS4 discs keeps calling -- and I have heard about some big changes in the tool. Everyone knows that Adobe software online documentation is abominable so I ended up getting this book by Rich Shupe to be my guide. I needed something that was both authoritative yet could pick up this beginner and carry him through a multi-faceted project.

When the book happened to fall open first to the tenth chapter "Inverse Kinematics" I feared I had made a mistake. I had no idea what that was! But the clear explanation on the first page of that chapter reassured me that I was indeed in good hands -- and so I began my study more conventionally by turning back to the beginning.

The book progresses through one project, each chapter going into another facet of using the tool. I like that since the process is less abstract and geared to solving problems and getting the basics down. The book has a lot of material to cover and there are lots of color illustrations to keep things from bogging down.

The author has put together a nice book companion site (http://www.learningflashcs4.com/) with downloadable project files. Below are the book chapters that some may find helpful in deciding if this book is for them.

Chapter 1. Interface Essentials
Chapter 2. Creating Graphics
Chapter 3. Using Symbols
Chapter 4. Importing Graphics
Chapter 5. Animation
Chapter 6. ActionScript Basics
Chapter 7. Filters and Blend Modes
Chapter 8. 3D
Chapter 9. Components
Chapter 10. Inverse Kinematics
Chapter 11. Text
Chapter 12. Audio
Chapter 13. Video
Chapter 14. Publishing and Deploying

This is a good book for serious professionals interested in expanding their toolset.

§

Learning Flash CS4 Pro is somewhat helpful to those new to Flash, however, there's not enough overview. It takes you step by step through the process of building a portfolio, but doesn't bother to explain much about what you're doing or how each Flash tool might apply to other projects. Lacks continuity -- feels like several teams might have written different sections of the book and something has gotten lost in the compilation. Also, the editing is substandard. There are numerous typos and in a technical manual, this can become a problem.

I am an absolute Flash beginner, I have never used the program in my life. This book is a terrible excuse for a teaching manual. It often skips steps, has barely any pictures to help keep you on the right track and in the current chapter skipped an entire section about building a certain part of the project you are working on throughout the book. I usually love O'reilly books and products but this is just awful.

To recap:

Not really a great beginner book.
Skips around a lot.
Shoddy and or missing instructions.
Skips huge portions of projects.
Leaps around often confusing the beginner.

I will be sending this book back as it has done nothing but infuriate me and leave me asking many, many questions.

Rich Shupe's LEARNING FLASH CS4 PROFESSIONAL: GETTING UP TO SPEED WITH FLASH offers beginning and intermediate users a fine introduction to the latest version of Flash, packing in color examples to cover both new and old features. No previous Flash experience is needed, making this an outstanding recommendation for both computer and general collections.

Before reading my review, please understand that I am not native in English as there could be some grammartical errors while you are reading.

I had zero experience with editing or creating a new Adobe Flash project file before purchasing this book. I thought that creating my own piece of Flash work would be tough or burdensome as I was frightened that it may require lots of technical knowledge like ActionScript when I started out Flash.

I've done most of the chapters that are shown in the book. Some experts would think of this book is not that detail. From beginners' standpoint, however, what I like in this book is that every instruction in every chapter is specific including pictures. Up to now, I have been able to understand everything that I've learned from the book.

Though I have installed Adobe Flash CS5 in my laptop, I still could follow every step explained in this CS4 book though some menu or dialog locations in my software somewhat differ from that of CS4. You don't have to worry too much if you are going to buy this book and going to use the latest Flash software.

I know that there are some new alternative technologies like HTML5, and I'll also try to learn it when time allows. However, Adobe Flash is still omnipresent over the web and this is also significant to me. I am still learning from the book. This one worked as expected.

I bought this book after reading the 4-star reviews. I have used Flash for about 4 years, and as a mid-range user, bought Learning Flash CS4 Professional to learn about new stuff, and a refresher for things I forgot. My first disappointment, the template for a design portfolio which is so overdone and confusing as an underlay for learning a new application, and certainly one that a good designer would never want to use.
By chapter 3, putting together the Sound Controller, I was sorry I bought the book. The steps as outlined by the author are confusing, especially in a file that, when using multiple masks, does not distinguish between the layers and steps clearly. Typical of poor instruction methodology, when setting size and position for an object, Shupe's instructions for the Property Panel sets width and height first and X-Y positions second. Anyone looking at the Property Panel sees that X and Y positions are at the top, while width and Height are below.

In addition, while Shupe uses steps as his instruction setup,each step contains a multiple of instructions, and his naming protocol can be confusing when trying to follow multiple instructions in a step.
A good editor, with a background in how-to documentation would bring this well-intentioned book back from where it lies right now.

While this book provides its fair share of items that will bring you up to speed with the different tools, animation styles and methods for importing files I believe that there are somethings that are missing. This book should be recommended for anyone with previous Flash experience because there are some errors in the code based off of instance and movie clip names, etc., and there are some very minor, yet important steps that need to be spelled out for people that have no prior Flash experience.

My honest opinion is if you have never picked up a Flash book before, pick up the Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Hands-On Training by Todd Perkins. I don't know if they have created a CS4 version but if you can get passed the fact that the interface is slightly different, this is the most thorough book I have read when it comes to everyday Flash design.