Customer Reviews

Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Beyond the Basics Hands-On Training

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After slogging my way through too many Flash books that start from scratch, and then trying to learn Actionscript by reading Macromedia's limp documentation, I had just about given up getting to the next level of Flash. Being the only "webguy" in our organization with lots of PHP to code doesn't leave me a lot of time to try and learn Flash.

This book put it all together. No lengthy tutorials on using the pen tool and designing pretty graphics, this book gets you right off to actually putting Flash to work on the web. I particularly appreciated the opening chapters on arganization of .swf files and the hierarchy used by the author. Actionscript is introduced gradually through the book and everything works as it should.

With this book you don't need to complete every tool that is offered. I skipped the MP3 player and Video, although I plan to go back to the video later. I was easily able to incoporate some small Flash apps I had written into the main parts of the Flash site. Most books don't give you options of using anything other than what the tutorials give you, making it hard to incorporate your own stuff.

I got through the bulk of what I needed to create a good Flash site in 4 days. However, I'll be going back and re-reading just about everything to reinforce for future projects.

One very small quibble. Although I like the author's writing style, I found the use of "smilies" in the book to be unprofessional. Leave that stuff to the internet. :)

Let me just say that this book is fabulous. This is something the Flash community has needed more than it realizes! I've read a handful of books that get you started, and a handful of books that cover the most esoteric ActionScript programming possible... but there has simply not yet existed a book that covers the middle ground.

For someone who knows the basics, even of an older version of Flash, this is the book you want. You learn how to make a complete, real, functional, PRO website using Flash, and you learn all of the must-know techniques that took me forever to figure out! Plus, the author teaches you the best practices for programming correctly in ActionScript 2.0, making this one of the few books to do so.

All in all, I would recommend this book to nearly everyone interested in serious website development in Flash. It's a wonderful book.

After completing Yeungs intro to flash book, I thought the title of this one would fit me perfectly. I was not dissappointed.

Having conquered the basics of flash, the next logical step is actionscript. Shane picks up nicely where Roseanna left off by introducing you to coding a website using actionscript. I found myself constantly nodding and saying "Now I could do the same thing by creating multiple movies but using actionscript makes it so much easier and decreases the file size significantly". He doesn't assume any prior knowledge of actionscript, and brilliantly walks you through the basics of each and every object he uses (even when the command is similiar to ones you have already used).

I don't understand how the previous guy had problems understanding the author. I am by no means brilliant when it comes to flash and I found myself skipping over a lot of his explanations because they were too detailed. And the exercises are flawless. I did have some problems working some of them out, but when I retraced my steps I found that it was my error and not Shane's (such as embedding fonts-- I followed the MAC directions when I had a PC). Another thing that guy said is that he doesn't use the LoadMovie command. I don't know how he missed the REASON why he doesn't use that command (it is now or will soon be deprecated). He clearly says this in the book and introduces you to a nice alternative (MovieClipLoader class -- Not the myMC which was just the object that was instantiated from this class). My advice to that guy is Yah Roseanna's book was great, but it's time to move on man. That was an introductory book and I know it's hard to learn new things after you have been taught one way, but this author will not lead you astray.

My only complaint is the material is dry. I mean ActionScripting just isn't as fun as tweening movies and making pretty animations but that is something that is unavoidable. Shane's writing style is refreshing and does a great deal to ease this boredom.

This is a wonderful well thought out book. The exercises were complete and worked EXACTLY as they said they would. I am an experienced Flash developer and I find this book very valuable to me and my department. The book takes you through intermediate steps on actionscript and the new cascading style sheets to be exported into Flash. Finally, a good book that talks more about true flash developing than just learning how to make a button or tweening something. This is a true book for intermediate to professional developers in Flash. You will not be sorry you bought this book.

Your search is over. Hands down, the best "how to" book I have ever used! Superb and extremely pertinent exercises that are explained so clearly and consistently that even I, actually a Flash beginner who decided to stretch a bit and start off with an intermediate level book, was able to get into it and be productive immediately. The author's method for creating a "modular" system is so smart that if you follow his lead, all your Flash based projects will download and render at lightening speeds all the while being very easily edited and updated. Bravo!

I have been through the ringer with programming books. I've taken the Microsoft cert. courses, I worked with computer systems since I was a kid (I'm 28 now) and I have bought any book you can imagine. This book, however, was the first book that actually gave me practical uses and told me exactly what I was doing. It made total sense and made me excited to program.

For the longest time I have been looking for a book that can explain to me when to use specific datatypes, functions, if/else statements and so on. This book was the first to do that and I have, in the two weeks since I have gotten the book, been able to land two flash web design projects with a couple more in the works as we speak.

This book has changed my programming life and has completely opened my eyes to the power of actionscript and many other programming languages.

I only wish that Shane and Lynda would write more books in this fashion using other languages like Java or C#.

This is a fantastic book and I am happy that I bought it.

After whizzing thru the Yeung introductory book for Flash MX I was anxious to dive into the Beyond The Basics book. The content did not let me down, it's a perfect fit for my skill level now. My only complaint is that, unlike the first H.O.T. book, some of the important training pieces are ONLY available as Quicktime movies. For instance, the chapter on building the MP3 player is great, but the step-by-step training for building the progress bar and volume control are not documented in the text, there is just a prompt to open movies on the CD. If I wanted to watch movies I would have bought a membership at lynda.com instead of buying a book! Don't be discouraged from buying the book because of this, just thought the author might read this and get a hint for next time.

I taught myself Flash using a variety of sources and I agree that finding "intermediate" books on Flash is quite difficult, so I was quite excited for this one. The instruction in the book is good and sometimes a bit too basic, but what kills me is the videos! (how many times do you need to explain the fact that the movie is running at 21fps??). I would also assume that most readers will be familiar with the concepts of cutting, pasting, creating new line breaks using return, and so forth.

Good concepts, but the explanations can be sped up quite a bit! (I've been running the movies at 2x the speed and understand him just fine).

Okay, now that that's off my chest. Good book.

Excellent book. The author has obviously taught classes and adopted a style that can be followed by any type of reader/student. If you are a novice you will have no trouble following each step-by-step lesson and learn the topics covered. When you are finished with the book your skill level will have improved.

If your skills are advanced or intermediate you will be able to get through each lesson quickly and learn another way of accomplishing something. The videos on the CD are good and delve deeper into the topics covered in the book.

One of the main goals of the book is to teach the concept of object oriented programming. As you go through the book you build a web site, or, better, an application that loads the different applications you learn about in the book, all tied together by a navigation section.

The use of winks and jokes may seem inappropriate to some, but it kept things light for me and I even laughed a couple of times.

I would recommend this book to anyone who needs to learn how to produce Flash applications. You must know the basics of Flash, and you will not learn about tying to databases or using XML or web services. This is why this is the perfect INTERMEDIATE Flash book.

This is the first book I have read from this author. I am very pleased with what this book taught and I have recommended it to many others.
It is in my opinion not a real intermediate book but more like part 2 of a beginner book for coding. I think it could have gotten a little deeper. That is most likely just my take. I was not new to flash. I bought this book as a refresher and as a book that would update me and get me ready for Studio 8. I suggest this book to anyone starting in flash or who have basic knowledge of flash and anyone wanting to get a good soldi grasp of action script.
The action script they use to teach is great and how they explain stuff is also wonderful. It is a bit slow but in the scheme of things would you rather him go fast and confuse you or slow and slightly bore you. I did play the movie files on fast forward and you could understand everything perfectly. So pick this book up and add it to your collection. I do believe it will be a great addition to anyones library.