Customer Reviews

Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Killer Tips

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

 

 

I've worked with Flash for years now and I'll say this. The tips in this book are certainly intended for novice to intermediate users, which I am not. Honestly, it doesn't seem like the book makes any efforts to focus on advanced users, thus I gave it 4 stars for that and the writing style which I enjoyed. The author is self-deprecating in a charming fashion. However, I can't escape the fact that the book was presented by the publisher as a book of tips for advanced users and hence my disappointment. Buy this book if you'd rate yourself from 1 to 6 of 10 on Flash knowledge, but if you're an expert there's no need.

I'm going to first preface this review by saying, if you are looking for advanced development techniques or samples of complicated physics or communication code, you will not find that in this book. People have come to expect any old book about Flash to cover anything and everything as well as provide working code samples specific to a project they may be working on at the time. This book, however, is aptly titled.
Flash MX 2004 Killer Tips has got plenty of little tidbits of information that will help to speed up your workflow, make you more familiar with the user interface, even help you out in times of crisis. The author's self-exhaling sense of humor makes the book fun to read as well.
Everyone should be able to take away something from this book, whether you are a seasoned Flash professional like myself, or a total n00b donning the self applied title of a "Flasher", there will be something in this book for you.
I'd recommend reading the Amazon sample pages if you are unsure, and if after that, you are still unsure, look for a copy to flip though at your local bookstore before purchasing on Amazon.com.
Final summation - the information inside is well worth the price.

I have read the other reviews as I often do and I must say that it seems they're a bit jaded or something. Yes these tips are geared toward the novice, but I found many that were quite interesting even for someone like me who has quite a bit of experience in Flash. I actually teach Flash and many of the questions I get from my students are addressed in this book. Make no mistake, the book is for new Flash people, but I for one like the style of writing (at least makes reading somewhat interesting) and the tips work well for me. There's one tip about adding an extension to variables in actionscript that forces Flash to recognize the variable as a certain type. I must say, I had no idea about this one and couldn't find it in the online help files anywhere. Anyhow, I certainly don't agree with the one stars at all, but then again I would say the book is geared more toward the novice for me, so I can't agree with the 5 stars. So I'll go with 4. Take it for what you will.

Here's the killer tip - don't get this book. It proves you can get anything published if you come up with a good title. There is absolutely nothing killer about any of the so-called tips, many of which are just commentary or ads presented as "Hey, look, I just gave you another great tip." If you are completely new to using computers you might learn the most basic fundamentals of how any application works, like clicking on things to select them, or that you can reposition windows. Ooo, wow! Flash's built in online help covers every topic here without the trouble of thumbing through this waste of paper. And the author's overbearing self-absorbed tone makes it all the worse. There are plenty of good Flash books at Amazon, get one of them but avoid this one.

Flash MX 2004 Killer Tips describes itself as being a book that contains all the cool tips you would normally find in the margins of other, more in depth Flash books. The tips are mostly user-interface-related, often pointing out less known but useful features that will save you time and make common tasks easier.

The book is smaller than most Flash books - it's only 191 pages long, but the space is used well. On each page there are an average of four tips-take away about 20 or 30 pages for table of contents and index stuff and you that leaves room for quite a few tips-you do the math. It's all color and the paper quality, layout and design are commendable. The author takes a very casual approach to his writing, making the book very readable and even entertaining.

If you've been using Flash for a short amount of time, or if you're new to the software, this book will be useful to you. It's a quick crash course that will have you working efficiently from the beginning rather than learning everything by trial and error.

If you've been using versions of Flash previous to MX 2004 and already consider your self to be an intermediate or advanced user, don't expect to find too much new here. Most of what you'll find will be little things here and there that will improve your process, but a lot of the material covered in this book will already be familiar.

There are a few, but not many tips specifically related to Flash MX 2004-most of what is covered are features that were already available in Flash MX. None of the features in Flash MX 2004 Professional such as Screens or Forms are mentioned. There is a small section on ActionScript, but most of what is mentioned are fairly small (but useful) tips or tweaks to the interface to make coding simpler.

If you're new to Flash and/or looking for a quick way to bring your Flash skills up to par and to improve your workflow, check out Flash MX 2004 Killer Tips.

The book is really easy to read with heaps of color images, and lots of finger tip tips.

The author writes very clearly and has many tips to speed up you flash authoring.

thank goodness i didn't read these reviews before buying my copy. i must admit i'm a complete novice when it comes to flash. i truly love the book. it's like all the questions i had were answered. i had a hard time understanding how to learn from the help menus so this book is like someone skimmed all the information and put it in easy to read exmaples for me. some of the tipsa are over my heade but i'm sure i'll get there after some practice. good book and very helpful to me.

If I could have given this book a big fat zero, that's what I would have done. I have never been so disappointed by a book as I was by this one. There are NO killer tips in this book, a ton of repeated "tips" (well, several tips that say virtually the same thing), and a whole bunch of completely pathetic attempts at humor. The writing style is atrocious. But this book deserves a 0 just based on content alone. The only thing OK about this book is the layout looks kind of pretty, maybe that makes it worth 1 star.

"Killer Tips" goes over the bloody user interface, tools and rudimentary one line code, and does NOT go beyond. Like, there are several tips that are just about making a panel floating instead of docked. Or, how to close a panel. Or, here's what a menu option does. This is how you select something. Here's how to select part of an image now. Or something like use the rotate and skew tool to rotate and skew things. And amazing ActionScript "killer tips" like getURL. This // comments out code, ain't it cool. Zoom into the stage using the zoom tool. These are TIPS?? No, this is rudimentary file/tool/interface operations that any novice would know how to do, and it's not even done WELL here. On top of all this, there are all these references to himself that we'll be thanking the author for these morsels. Right. Not to mention there is even a tip to go by some other New Riders book, or go visit this web site. Yep, commercials masquerading as 'killer tips'.

This book shows NO expertise whatsoever. It contains bad code of the most basic sort, and barely goes beyond the most "dummy" things. I am not sure if I came across one useful tip whatsoever, and I haven't even used Flash that long.

I am so incredibly unimpressed by Killer Tips, and feel completely ripped off at the price tag (well, I would have at ANY price tag). I was ready for some useful tips, and couldn't find a single one. If I could return this book, I would do so in a heartbeat; but now I can only try to sell it for less than half price - and get to feel guilty ripping off whoever takes it off my hands.

I've seen some of these reviews saying the book is full of the basic information that every novice should know. I'll say this... I consider myself more than a novice and I've counted about 25 tips so far (from my limited exposure to the book) that I had no idea how to do. I guess novice is a relative term. Anyhow, I am a big fan of the Killer Tips books and have many of them. I am much more versed in Photoshop and would say that that Killer tip book for Photoshop is full of the same kind of stuff. In the Photoshop book there are only about a dozen tips that I would call killer. It seems to me that these books are targetted more toward those with less exposure to the programs they're discussing. I think the term Killer tips is misleading for the whole series. For instance in the Photoshop and Dreamweaver ones I've seen a tip on how to Tile your windows. That's not killer, right? But for someone it may be I guess.

So, I for one am thoroughly enjoying this book. For instance there are tips on transparent Flash movies, disabling the menu for the plug-in, forcing your movie to sync voice with animation, calling javascript, and tons more that i loved. There are also pointers to websites to help you decode your Flash movies if you lose your work or encrypt your work to absolutely protect it. And for me, the worst part about Flash has always been the interface and windows. There are tons of tips on how to organize these and collapse them in ways that help a lot when i have to work on my mom's 800x600 screen. Okay, so I'm rambling. All in all, I recommend the book as a great resource guide and a lot of really powerful tips.

All the tips in their are pretty lame. Like the tip on how to paint inside, erase fills or fill with gap, create a button using HIT state. Com'on, that not a tip if it can be found in the manual.

Save your money, read the manual and you will learn more than what you can get out of this book. Or, follow just one tip in that book, "Buy MM Flash MX Bible" instead of buying this book