Customer Reviews

Macromedia Flash MX: Training from the Source

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I looked at about 15 Flash MX books at the bookstore before deciding on this one (although I admit I couldn't find Foundation Flash MX which is supposed to be good as well.) This book is the only one I found which doesn't fall into the usual categories of application books: 1) Extended manuals which regurgitate what the program does but don't really teach you well, 2) Designer techniques which are for people who already know the program.

This one really takes you by the hand and helps you through designing an actual flash website so you are applying basics skills to a real-world project step by step.

Everything is really clear and well illustrated. The writing is fresh and clean and non-technical. It goes into every bit of the program that you need to do 95% of what most people use Flash for. It is setup like a training course not a reference manual and there is a throughline from beginning to end. Very well laid out with precise description of what you will learn per lesson.

The CD has all the files you will need included on it and plus there is a companion website.

Bottom line -- if you like diving in and exploring on your own this may be a bit limiting, but if you are a complete newcomer to Flash and would rather work on real examples not random feature explanations -- BUY THIS BOOK NOW.

Well worth the price (especially here on Amazon) unlike alot of application books out there. I can't wait to get the ActionScript volume as well.

In some matters I have to agree with the previous reviewers; there is quite a bit of technique covered in this book, and it is valuable as a tutorial that gets you working with the extensive feature set of Flash MX.

But I don't think they had actually done many of the tutorials; the chapters that deal with sending and receiving data from a server suffer because the companion web site, which is supposed to support these lessons, does not work.

In theory, that website will have a PHP server ready to respond to the lesson materials. Instead, there is one static file that simulates a simple data query (it returns the complete data set), but the lesson queries which require passing parameters to the data engine simply fail. At first I thought it was a problem with errors in the code I typed in as I followed the tutorial, but in fact the 'completed' lessons on the CD fail identically.

So... I would have given 5 stars but the book doesn't really keep it's promise to the reader to provide the ability to complete the lessons. I have tried to contact the author and the publisher (PeachPit Press, not Macromedia) but have had no reponses. Perhaps it only deserves 3 stars...

I was just getting started with Flash when I was assigned this book in a class. It is not a reference, as the back cover might suggest, but it is a very useful tool for learning Flash. I like the step by step approach. Some of the explanations are very long, but after getting a better feel for the program, I found that I could just skip the explanations and follow the steps. If I ever got confused or lost, or wanted to get some more background on what I was doing, I just read the explanation. The explanations seem to be written with a beginner in mind, and I do not think I would recommend this book for someone who already knows a lot of Flash. Everything I made from the book worked perfectly, though I did notice a few discrepancies between some of the pictures and the actual program. The discrepancies were not show-stoppers, and I had no trouble figuring out what the author was trying to convey, even though the program looked a little different from the pictures. I liked that I was able to create a complete web site using this book. I have picked up a few more advanced Flash books since reading this one, and I feel that knowing the basics because of this book has helped me find my way in those books. If you already know Flash pretty well, this book is probably not for you, but if you are a beginner like me, this book is the way to go!

This book was a lifesaver! I was asked to make a pretty basic Flash web site for work. The problem was that I knew absolutely no Flash. One of my friends told me to check this book out, so I did. The steps were so easy to follow, and the explanations told me exactly why I should do each step, which was very helpful in the beginning. The way the book is set up, I could simply read the steps and skip the explanations once I got the hang of things, but if I became confused or lost, the explanations helped immensely. The explanations also provided considerable insight into additional features related to a particular step. The author explained some pretty complex topics in a way that even a beginner like me could understand, and now that I'm done I feel like I could really tackle some more projects on my own. Everything was well-written, so far as I could tell. I loved that I was able to go through the process of building an entire web site in this book. I have reused many of the things that I did while reading in my project for work. If I could give more stars to this book, I would!

This book covers some essential points and provides an adequate overview of Flash. It fails, however, to explain much about basic Action Script interactivity. There is another book by the same publishing company that does go into more detail; however, this one fails to adequately cover the basics.

For example, in less than 3-4 pages, the author covers functions, movie clip scripts, arrays, variables, etc., etc. Now that is what I call a world wind tour! I don't think anyone who is new to Flash will understand what is going on. You can tell the author was in a hurry to publish this book. There are some inconsistencies in the references to screen capture images and the more than usual typos.

The other weakness in the publication is the boring example web page. Unlike "Flash 5: Training from the Source by the same author, this one is not very creative to look at or work with.

The book could be better if it was given more loving care and the author had taken the time to make the book interesting. If you want an overview of Flash MX, save your $40+ and just do the tutorials in the technical manual. They are more interesting and explain Flash MX basics very well.

I'm currently covering the book, the presentation of the material is straightforward, the author gets you up and running with a project as early as chapter 2 - granted that the degree of difficulty varies chapter to chapter.

Again, don't expect anything more than a "tour" of Flash, more in depth books are available. The reason I started with this book is to gain familiarity with the tools of Flash, get working on a quick project, and then advance to other books/training sources.

Overall, it's not 5 worthy, but I'll give it a 4 since it does a good job of giving me the upper-level details of FlashMX and ActionScript.

I agree with the rest of the reviewers who wrote that this book seems to have been rushed to put together. There is a (real) lot of repitition of how to do simple tasks; which I found to be annoying even for my first Flash book. At the same time, difficult programming concepts like ActionScript are crammed into a single chapter. I did get it at the end, but it took a lot longer than the recommended 2 hours to complete.
I think a chapter like that is great if you intend to use Flash as your primary tool to create an entire site. But if you are buying this book to use Flash as a companion to an HTML tool like Dreamweaver, then there is an overemphasis on the programming. (That is unless you just get a kick out of learning new languages).
Not withstanding all this, however, I must say the book *did* got the job done of teaching me Flash.
Unlike some other reviewers, I did not find the examples to be inconsistent except in one or two places. Besides, every chapter comes with a "Completed" folder on the CD; so its easy to check your results.
Lastly, I must make a point of strongly disagreeing with "A reader from San Francisco, CA USA " who said that Macromedia products are not intuitive. They are way more intuitive than .net or anything Microsoft has to offer.

I'm going to try to write the most balanced and fair review I can. Let me begin by writing about what the author got right.

First of all, this was probably a VERY difficult book to write. As an author myself, I have to sympathize. Flash concepts are difficult (because they're so intricate), the Flash interface is very difficult (because it's so intricate) and putting all the pieces of a movie together is difficult (because they're so intricate). This would be a very difficult book to write.

Second of all, the author was VERY good about explaining how to perform each step, even after she explained it a million times. For instance, the flash interface is so difficult that you may forget how to center a a shape. Everytime she asks you to center a shape, she tells you, again and again, how to do it. It must be very frustrating for an author to explain things ad nausem like that. But for a topic like flash for beginners, it's necessary.

The illustrations are great.

So that's what the author got right. Now I'll go into what she got wrong. I'll give you the punchline right now, though. The bad outweighs the good. By a lot, considering the amount of time it takes to go through the book.

I fully agree with deltatangou's review. The book is highly non-linear. It jumps from this to that, and can be accused of being very disorganized. She's meticulous in detail, but this kind of "from A to H and then from B to W" type of learning is not suitable for some kinds of people.

I suspect that this book might be good for people who have solid memories and like to learn things "by the seat of their pants". Many artists I know are like this.

However, if you're a methodical learner, and use knowledge to build on previously learned knowledge, this book will make you dizzy. You'll wonder "what the heck did I learn two chapters ago". You'll feel like you did a bunch of examples but didn't learn much.

The book is "goal oriented", and takes a top to bottom approach. The final goal is some flash project about a virtual zoo. This only aggravates the problem. Again, top to bottom learning is great for "seat of the pants" learning. You learn what you need to know, when you need to know it. Personally, I don't learn this way, but perhaps you do. I find it very difficult to see the trees through the forest with this book.

The only other flash book I've seen (and I've only thumbed through it) is the "Flash in 24 hours" book. From my percursory glance, it looks to be more suitable for me: it looks like it takes a bottom up approch.

Anyway, I'm giving this book one star, with the provisio that perhaps there are people who like to learn this way.

I liked this book and I agree with other reviewers that the typos are not show-stopping errors. Although it does breeze through the action scripting, it's not too bad if you're already familiar with JavaScript. If you don't have any experience with JavaScript, the action scripting might seem intimidating. This book is not a tutorial on JavaScript. I also agree that the website is not very flashy, but it does show you the basics and gives a good introduction to the various techniques needed to get started with Flash MX. What is seriously needed is a page of errata on the author's website (www.flashtfs.com). A page of errata would boost my rating of this book to four stars.

This is the best step-by-step book I have ever own! All the instructions come with picture of how your flash page should look like at any given point. So, you will know if you do it right every time. No confusion or misunderstanding or guessing games needed when reading this book. I created a whole new website just using flash when I finished reading this book. I strongly recommand this book for anyone who are interesting in learning flash. Let the magic flows on your web sites... :)