Customer Reviews

Macromedia Flash MX 2004: The Complete Reference, Second Edition

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

 

 

I have quite a collection of Brian Underdahl's books and I have always found his writing style to be easy to understand, accurate, and entertaining. I'm not new to Flash, but this book did a good job of introducing me to the changes in this new version of Flash.

One of the other reviews said this has little coverage of Flash ActionScript, but then I noticed the review is from 2002 and seems to be referencing another book. This one has PLENTY of ActionScript coverage- Chapters 20 to 31 to be exact! And these aren't short chapters!

I always try and write up reviews of books I find useful and this one demands a 5-star review. If you're looking for a book that covers Flash in-depth and will get you quickly up to speed (and not just making simple little animations) I can't recommend this book enough.

I am a technology consultant in Houston, TX and I have about 30 books in my collection on Flash alone. Only about 10 are used frequently and this is one of them.

I got my hands on this book and at first I was so excited because this was one of the first Flash MX 2004 books on the shelves so I just bought it immediately. After reading the introduction, I learnt that this book decided to not cover Flash MX 2004 Professional. Oddly, it wasn't a "Complete" reference after all. Nonetheless, I wanted to get my money's worth so I started reading on.

As much as the book seems to take a more text-based approach to explaining every tid bit of Flash, it fails miserably because it just seems like after reading 20 pages, you learnt something that could have been explained to you in merely 5 pages. I felt like I was wasting my time and eventually I just stopped reading the book, went out and looked for other books available.

If you REALLY want to learn Flash mx 2004, I'd suggest getting a book that takes you through tutorials rather than simply tells you what each thing does and runs you buy a tutorial the author does..

Oh and there is simply not enough screenshots or graphics to go along with the text, either they are uselessly detailed images or they simply dont exist.

I really hope I never come across another Flash MX 2004 book like this again. I wasted 384 pages worth of reading to this book and finally just let it go, I couldn't go on because it became so boring, reading it was like a painful job.

The first thing I liked about this book were the notes and tips in each chapter. Someone could just read the notes and tips and get some pretty good applicable tips on Flash MX. The book begins with the beginner in mind. I found the chapters on sound and video extremely helpful. I too have not read the Actionscript part yet, but know it will help me understand object programming using Actionscript 2.0 better than I do currently! Thanks for a great book!

This book does not attempt to cover the full edition of Flash MX 2004. If you have the professional version of Flash DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK! The book is titled "The Complete Reference" for Macromedia Flash MX 2004 but "Complete" it is not. The book is only 700 pages. I should have purchased the "Bible" series for this application. Osborne books are pretty much hit or miss... and you don't know until you try to look something up.