Customer Reviews

Macromedia Flash MX Unleashed

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This is to inform you that I will never buy another book from Sams! You really should be ashamed of yourselves for releasing such a poorly edited piece of garbage with your name attached. This is particularly unfortunate because the authors have presented a fairly comprehensive review of the capabilities of Flash Mx and Flash Actionscripting. However, because of the outrageous number of errors, both in the book and on the accompanying web site, it it difficult to follow and complete far too many of the exercises. I wish I had a dollar for every hour I have wasted because of this book - going down blind alleys, barking up the wrong tree, chasing ghosts, etc. Lord, how frustrating!

Thank you,

A former customer

The multitude of errors in this book have coused me countless hours of wasted time. I was so frustrated trying to make the most simple action work that I contacted the makers of the book who apologiezed and blamed the technical editors then recomended returning the book and getting Action Scripting in Flash by Philip Kerman. There are several corrections on the website but this represents only a fraction of the errors in the book that range from bad code, files in exercizes misnamed to the wrong images used in examples and that can all be found in one exercize!
Do NOT BUY THIS BOOK !!!!!

I am a web developer with some experience in Flash 5. I bought this book on the strength of its reviews here. At first it seemed like what I needed--a review of techniques and lots of scripting to get me jump-started in MX. As I was browsing the first few chapters I started to notice some crucial omissions in the exercises. Key steps like creating symbols and adding keyframes without which the exercise would fail. I figured them out and moved on.

I downloaded the tutorial files from the site and decided to try an exercise in Ch 7 (starting on page 167). It instructs you to create a 500x300 movie to match the one you're working in--ok except that the one you're working in is 425x325! You then are asked to place a bitmap graphic into that file. Diagram 7.17 on pg 171 shows that it's supposed to measure 450x285 so it can fit nicely into the rest of the layout--it actually measures 450x303 which causes it to overlap the navigation! So I resized it and forged on. Next you're supposed to add an action to the "About Us" button--there is no such button. OK moving along. The hit state of the next button is the text itself--very hard to click on and exactly what the author warns against on pg 109. The next exercise (pg 174) asks you to select a movieclip called slide-show from the provided unleashed.fla library--the movie clip isn't there.

I could go on but I think I've made my point. Those reviewers who gave this book a high rating obviously did not try this exercise and are willing to excuse other myriad errors. Perhaps things improve in the later chapters but the authors have been extremely careless and I am going to return this book before it wastes any more of my time.

I bought this on the high street yesterday and I'm taking it back today. The book is full of errors and I already wasted an hour debugging two of their examples. It's just unacceptable. Look at the code halfway down page 599. There are at least 4 showstopping bugs in just 9 lines of code.

At the bottom of page 622 the reader is instructed to download the files for one project from <INSERT DOWNLOAD SITE HERE>. I guess they never got round to inserting it.

This edition feels like an early draft of what might have been a decent volume, but I'm not paying this amount of money to have my time wasted.

I'm a programmer - not a designer. I think that in the hands of anyone who doesn't know how to approach broken code and fix it, this book would likely cause a lot of frustration and dissuade them from continuing. Please avoid.

I just got this book a few days ago and I wanted to write a review. I've only worked in depth with a couple of chapters and skimmed through the rest, but this book is top-notch. It offers great coverage on the subject of Flash, including the new MX features. Sams did a great job of putting this book together. This book really acts as a great learning tool as well as a solid reference, so you get the best of both worlds in a single book.

This is a great book filled with no-nonsense information. What I like about this Unleashed book in comparison to other series is it doesn't fill space about other topics other than Flash.
The step-by-step examples in this book are killer, if you need to learn ActionScript than this is the book!...
If you're new to Flash I would still consider this because some of the earlier chapters lay a great foundation - and if you're more advanced there's some great web-app features in this book, including a game chapter.
As with every book, there are a few draw backs. I was disappointed to see the drawing API wasn't covered and I wish it came with a CD-ROM instead of a web site. Still worthy of 5 stars due to the strong content in the rest of the book.

There is good about this book and there is bad about this book. The good: This book has many examples and explains to the reader how to do lots of different things with flash. Take a look at the contents of the book and you will see that it covers a great deal.
The bad: This book is full of mistakes. The editor should be fired for what he did with this book. One or two mistakes in a book is OK BUT this book has an average of 1 mistake per chapter and this is NOT acceptable in a professional book. My advice is: If you can find another Flash MX book that will cover all of the same topics as this one, then get it otherwise buy a USED copy of this book.

I have just begun reading the book, and on the simplest example, there are incorrect steps. I know A LITTLE about the concepts used in Flash, so I was able to get around the tutorial, but I would not recommend this book. How are you to know what is right or wrong if you have never seen it before? It is obvioulsy hard to tell if a book is accurate until you have spent your money, so choose wisely!

Here's the deal, if you need to learn Flash MX - than this book is worth taking a look at. The way that it was written, really make topics clear. In fact, I never used Flash before and after spending about ten days with this book, I made a complete Flash web site. I can not only create animations and cool interface elements...but I UNDERSTAND actionscript. I have looked at other books, and while I don't doubt the authors know their stuff - they don't show and teach you how to use Flash like this book.

However, there are errors in this book which have held me up. I was lucky enough to have contacted the some of authors and they did answer my questions. I do give this book 5 stars for the content. If you are not good at problem solving - I regretfully have to say pass it up. Like some other Sams books the technical editors and proof readers were out to lunch.

If you are thinking about buying this book, don't. If you have already purcahsed this book, as I have, return it immediately. If it is too late to return it, the unethical thing to do is sell it to someone else, but you know what I would really recommend.

The organization of the book looked enticing to me, which is why I bought it. The book covered everything I wanted it to, while providing specific examples for the development environment I was going to use. However... While working through the examples I thought I was either going totally insane, or that I had gone completely stupid. This book is inacurate, inconsistant, and generally flawed to the point where a third grader could do a better job of proofreading it.

The reason I bought the book was because the table of contents matched my needs in a comprehensive Flash MX book, as well as a general trust in Sams Publishing materials. This book has really let me down! Had I first read the feedback here -- before buying the book at [a local store] -- besides getting a better deal, I would have saved myself many hours of frustrating toil. From now on the first thing I do when shopping for a book is to come to amazon.com and read customer reviews.

Save the Trees! Recycle this Book! Go buy ActionScripting in Flash MX by Philip Kerman. You'll be happy you did!