Macromedia Flash Professional 8 Hands-On Training [Paperback]

James Gonzalez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0321293886 | ISBN-13: 978-0321293886

Do you like to learn by doing? Do manuals leave you bored and craving real-world examples? Do you want to concrete training that goes beyond theory and reference materials? If so, this book is for you. These hands-on exercises teach you to start creating Flash animations and interactive files with little effort. You ll learn to create vector animations using a wide variety of drawing tools and Timeline effects, and add interactivity and dynamic content to your projects by using ActionScript 2, Components, and the Behaviors panel. You ll also learn how to import bitmaps, sounds, and video to make your Flash projects more engaging, and find extensive coverage of the new Flash 8 features: the improved text tool, new text rendering engine, new graphic filters, and more. Complete with insider tips, illustrated with detailed graphics, and accompanied by a CD loaded with classroom-proven exercises.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James Gonzalez is a computer applications and multimedia professor at the College of Marin, California, where he teaches courses in interactive media design, eLearning and Web technologies. James has over sixteen years of experience in the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of technology-focused instructional programs. He has taught courses nationwide on the use of multimedia software and their applications in instructional environments and has also published widely on these subject. When not teaching or writing, James provides consulting and technical services on the applications of multimedia and telecommunications technologies for training and education.

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Press (January 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321293886
• ISBN-13: 978-0321293886
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #779,809 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Learn all the Flash 8 basics in this great book!, February 10, 2006

By 

Frank Stepanski (PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Macromedia Flash Professional 8 Hands-On Training (Paperback)

This book covers every basic to intermediate topic I can think of in Flash 8 Professional. It assumes no knowledge of Flash 8 at all and gives a great overall explanation of Flash in general and what it can be used for. It also is a great book for people who have used Flash in the past but want a refersher course on what new things are available in the lastest version of Flash.

The book starts out in Chapter 2 in describing the Flash environment and every area such as the toolbox, timeline, layer controls, panel sets, keyboard shortcuts, and customizing your environment. The next chapter goes through many well documented exercises in showing the reader how to use the many drawing and selection tools in the toolbox (pen, pencil, brush, shape tools, ink bottle, transform tool, eraser, etc.).

The fourth chapter goes into animation basics in explaining very succinctly all the parts of the timeline and how it is used in animation. The chapter is very important because if you do not understand the timeline and how to use it correctly you will never really understand Flash. The author does a great job in this especially since this a very visual topic and many illustrations and screenshots are used to help the reader visualize what he is trying to explain. The next chapter contnues with animation and talks about shape tweening.

Chapter 6,7,8 focus on symbols and how they are used in other types of animation (motion-tweening) and a new feature in Flash 8 called filter and blend modes (very powerful).

Chapter 9,10,11 focus on the other 2 types of symbols which are button and movieclips. Button symbols allow for interaction between the Flash movie you create and the viewer. Movieclips allow for interaction as well and add alot of more powerful features with ActionScript that is explained in full detail in Chapter 12 and 13. The author has some great examples in those chapters with buttons and movieclips. These are two other importat topics in understanding Flash.

The rest of the book 12-16 focus on some intermediate topics such as ActionScripting, adding sound and video, using components with Flash. These require a little coding practice, but the authore goes very slowing and in great detail explaining these issues so the beginner does not get lost at all.

The final chapter (17) reviews publishing which shows the reader how to get their flash movies on the web.

A great overall book for the Flash beginner or someone who wants to refresh their skills on the latest Flash version (8).

Also, the book includes a 24-hour pass to Lynda.com, which is a fantastic site that has tons and tons of great video tutorials on many topics like Flash and other Macromedia products as well.

The book is worth every penny and then some...

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good introduction, April 25, 2006

By 

Felix Sheng (NY, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Macromedia Flash Professional 8 Hands-On Training (Paperback)

I almost gave this book 3 stars, but realized that it was just 3 based on my flawed expectations for the book. I had been looking for a good introduction to flash with an eye towards the capabilites of actionscript. Sadly, the action script section of the book was very short and very basic - really just giving you the basics of using the wizard to perform rudimentary tasks. But, the book never professed to offer any great actionscript insights, so, there's that.

As an introduction this book is very good, especially for the beginner. This offers step by step on how to do perform many of the tasks in flash. At times, I think, it's a little too basic, but that may just be me (for example every time they ask you to hit return they say Press Enter (for windows) or Return (for mac) throughout the whole book). But it doesn't really take away from the book.

Everything is very clearly presented, tools are explained, I was impressed that they made very pointed use of keyboard shortcuts. They gave screen shots and images to illustrate most steps which is very helpful in a book like this. The book covers the basics, using the drawing tools, tweening, buttons, movies, importing various media including video.

Each chapter begins with a half page overview, then another page or three of deeper coverage and then several step by step exercises. Most of these are very focused exercises, relying on the provided cd's different pre-made projects to start you off at a point where you can focus on the task at hand. Strewn throughout the exercises are tips and more explanatory text when a subject warrants a half page or page more of description.

I found the book good at presenting a top level view of flash. I suspect that it will not be a book that I go back to frequently as the organization by project doesn't lend itself to convenient referencing. But that's a trade off, great books for reference are very rarely good introductory books. So overall, I'm pretty satisfied that this book achieved what it set out to do.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This book is not well organized..., March 22, 2006

By 

GG - See all my reviews

This review is from: Macromedia Flash Professional 8 Hands-On Training (Paperback)

If you are trying to learn flash for the first time it is crucial that a tutorial focus on the essentials. Most beginners need to get a feel for the common progression of using such a complex program. This book fails to answer the burning question; How is this program used in the real world.

The progression of build a flash project from start to finish is not defined based on the order of topics covered in this book.
Instead you have topics that are randomly layed out. Not enough screenshots were presented for key topics such as tweening (the heart of flash). This book seems more of a continuation of the previous version which ,by the way, has exercises that were from the previous version of the book written by Roseanna Yeung. Come on Lynda.com! How about more creativity?!?!?!? This is Flash.

If you want a really good book that lays out the basics clearly andstraight to the point...check out "The Focal Easy guide to Macromedia Flash 8" by Birgitta Hosea.

I spent half a day reviewing every single flash book on the shelf and the aforementioned one made my cut. I was intent on getting Macromedia's Flash 8 training from the source but that book is a nightmare.

This book isnt bad but I wouldn't want to learn using this book if I were completely new to Flash 8.