18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Solid Introductory Text, May 12, 2008
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Flash CS3 Professional in 24 Hours (Paperback)
Starting off with Flash CS3, I watched all the video tutorials available freely from Adobe. These are quite good, but they also tend to assume you already know Flash- either from a previous version or from the help tutorials (which aren't so hot). In most cases, they already have everything set up and ready to go, and you have no idea how they even got to the starting point. Additionally, the coverage of the basic functionality of the stage, objects, and instances is very brief and not too thorough. The biggest problem with these tutorials is that it's very cumbersome to follow along with them without hitting the pause button every 10 seconds, since the folks doing them obviously are experts with the Flash interface and just plow through their examples at breakneck speed.
This Sam's book does a really good job of filling in those important parts, and does it in a step-by-step approach that lets you go at your own pace. It assumes absolutely NO prior knowledge of ActionScript or Flash, so those coming in cold will have no problems. Each chapter (or 'hour') is well-written and can be taken stand-alone if the reader is already familiar with some topics. Each exercise walks you through from the very beginning, and most don't depend on a previous one. The coverage is quite basic- by the end, you'll be able to do such things as import video, make simple interactive movies, do basic scripting and animation, and deploy it to a website. For more advanced things, you'll need other resources (of which there are- quite literally- tons of books available) but after reading this you'll have a very solid foundation to build from. From there you can do simple projects and can decide what (if anything) you would care to learn more about.
In my opinion, the sections on ActionScript are explained quite well, though admittedly I'm a very experienced programmer that had no problems understanding the syntax. Those who have no programming experience might find it a bit tougher; for those that want to learn this and care a great deal about it, there are whole books dedicated just to learning ActionScript (e.g. Learning ActionScript 3.0 by Shupe and Rosser). The only other possible complaint I could foresee about this text is that some of the chapters will take you substantially more than an hour to finish, unless you're either already familiar with Flash or are a really fast reader.
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39 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Putting the Practical before the Pedagogic and Coming up a Winner, August 15, 2007
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Flash CS3 Professional in 24 Hours (Paperback)
I e-mailed Phillip Kerman after reading his Sam's Flash 8 Professional book, and he wrote back and answered me right away. Afterwards, I went away from Flash to study Maya, and did not read Flash books anymore. After abandoning Maya (Did I say what a sucky business the movie business is? Not to mention the cost of keeping up with the hardware and software requirements as a lowly student before you even get to your first paying job - better have a rich uncle!), I am back at it with a vengeance, this time with a new version of Flash and ActionScript to learn, and with Phillip Kerman's Flash CS3 book planted firmly by my side.
It would be great if all computer books were situational. For example, "I'm trying to do this and that, here's what I've done so far, and where I'm getting stuck. Now what?" Well, gee, we've anticipated this exact problem, and the answer is printed right there on page 187 - that exact problem you're having! Would that it be so, but as far as I know, they are not currently printing books on psychic paper as of yet.
The next best thing? Really good examples of exercises and code that are useful, and not just learning for the sake of learning pedagogery, but something really practical. I mean, it might be nice to know how to capture an integer in ActionScript, return it to a parameter, and then spit it out in a trace statement, but how's that gonna help me show off my skills to a potential employer? Employers aren't impressed with manipulating integers as a rule.
After I'd had enough of the online training, and read enough of the other Flash CS3 books, I decided to create my first major Flash project. I had problems making a link from one of my buttons, and also testing my pages on my hard drive before uploading them. Not only does Phillip's book come to the rescue solving these basic problems, but it is also so easy to look up direct solutions using the book's index.
Also, his exercises are small, self-contained, easy ones to complete. As I began working on my Flash project and things started not to work, I went back to the approach of just getting one thing at a time right (as he shows in his book), and then to try integrating it into the larger project. It is much easier and less frustrating to get one thing to work properly, than to have to watch an entire Flash movie each time through just to see if last little part you added works or not. And if it doesn't, then what? Chunkify it, my friends, chunkify it! Put it into small chunks and get them to work right away. Worry about integrating them all later, when you know more about what you're doing.
Of the other major Flash CS3 books on the market, and there really aren't that many right now (Classroom in a Book, Flash CS3 Professional on Demand, and the two Visual Quickstart Guide titles) I find Phillip Kerman's book the hands-down winner, based purely on his practical approach.
Of course, it would be great to have an accomplished Flash teacher sitting there next to you while you work, but Phillip has taken the time to carefully explain how each thing works, and it is obvious that he has tested these exercises to make sure they work before publishing his book, or even sat down newbies (I strongly suspect) at the computer to go through them first to see if a total novice can get it. With other books, you get the feeling the authors are working soley out of their heads, and haven't really taken the time to show their stuff to others first to get the kind of feedback you need to really make your technical writing understandable by the general public.
Too many computer books have exercises that don't even work, or have been explained in a way that assumes prior knowledge of the program. Happily, Phillip's book does not suffer from these pitfalls. It's called doing your job as an author. My job as a reader, then, is to say thank you, and support this fine work, and encourage others to check him out.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very good tutorial for flash newbs, March 17, 2008
This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Flash CS3 Professional in 24 Hours (Paperback)
I'm a programmer who was tasked with integrating a flash UI in to our system. Knowing absolutely nothing about flash, I picked this book up based on the reviews here, and I wasn't disappointed. I went from zero to hero, in less than the allotted 24 hours :) Though the author really does start from the basics, the exercises are well though out and the steps were correct (unlike the abysmal tutorials that Flash ships with!) He also goes in to good detail about the theory of what you're doing, which was nice. For example, he has a good treatise on animation, and an excellent description of how the shape tweening mechanics actually work. I definitely recommend this book if you're completely new to flash and need to get up to speed pretty quickly.
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