Macromedia Flash MX Components Most Wanted: Ready Made Drag 'n' Drop Design Solutions (with CD ROM) [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

~ Friends of Ed (Author), Aral Balkan (Author), Paul Prudence (Author), Todd Coulson (Author), Jen deHaan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Creating web designs and site content in Macromedia Flash MX can be a lot of fun, but there are always tasks that you'll want to do again and again. It's always a bit of a hassle to have to keep recreating and tweaking the same old content or functionality in different projects, so why can't you just reuse what you've created? With components, you can do just that!

Flash MX Components enable the creation of self-contained design building blocks that can be simply dragged and dropped into any Flash movie. They are flexible enough to be easily customized to take care of many different tasks. No fuss, no bother - you can repurpose the standard elements of your design, application, or game, and use them over and over again.

But wait, it gets better! Components can be used by anyone, not just the person who created them. So in this book, we’ve done all the hard work for you and collected together the Most Wanted components that will make your life easier.

In this book (and on the CD) you’ll find a perfect combination of creative and functional components from some of today’s leading Flash designers and developers. Just look at the fantastic components you get:

- Event Calendar - David Doull
- Text Editor - Josh Dura
- XML News Ticker - Jon Steer
- Tool Tip - Brandon Williams
- Sketchpad - Steve Young
- Video Player - Jen DeHaan
- Image Scroller - Brian Monnone
- Pattern Generators - Paul Prudence
- TabControl - Jeremy Larkin
- Sliding Panel - Todd Marks
- ColorPicker - Jeremy Larkin
- Game Player Selector - Todd Coulson
- Particle Emitter - Jared Tarbell
- Layout Manager - Michael Montagna
- Data Grid - Daryn Nakhuda
- Movie Loader - Aral Balkan
- Image Modulators - Lifaros
- XML-to-ActionScript Converter - Mike Pearce
- Virtual 3D Trackball - James Palmer
- Text Animations - Todd Yard
- Dynamic Text Manager - Peter Elst

Each of these components is included on the accompanying CD, ready to incorporate within your designs, along with plenty of example files giving practical demonstrations of their use. On top of that, each chapter in this book presents a comprehensive designer-oriented guide that will help you to get the most out of using all of the featured components.

If you’re a Flash designer, of any ability from novice to professional, this book will increase the power of your Flash designs and enhance your project workflow – instantly!

From the Publisher

This book is for experienced Flash users and novices alike. That is the beauty of Flash components, they are so easy to use that those who are fairly new to Flash can use them to create movies that would ordinarily be out of their reach, whereas the more experienced designer can use them as great time-saving tools, cutting the time needed to create their applications and improving their productivity.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Friends of Ed; Bk&CD-Rom edition (January 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1904344100
• ISBN-13: 978-1904344100
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,734,935 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nifty Components, Lacking in Real Technical Depth, March 9, 2003

By	Brian Klaas (Reisterstown, MD United States) - See all my reviews

"Flash MX Components Most Wanteed" is targeted towards designers and those that shy away from ActionScript. The book focuses on explanations of how to use each of the components -- not how they were created or the design choices made while building these sometimes extraordinarily complex components. Many of the components contained on the CD are quite useful, but I personally could have done without the "nifty graphics" and image manipulation components. It's nice to have detailed explanations of each of the available component parameters (kind of like a product manual), but the book left me wanting more about the hows and whys of creating solid, useful Flash MX components.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a darn good bargain, February 12, 2003

By	Donny (Idaho) - See all my reviews

I still can't believe i only paid so little for this book, it's just awesome! I've been using Flash for a couple of years now, but only recently started getting into MX components - any designer (or even developer?) looking for efficient solutions should really look into using them. I'm at the point now where i'm having to reuse as much code/design elements as i can now because
work is just soooo busy, and with this book you get a cd containing 21 components (actually, there's even more than that if you count some of the neat experimental ones!). I'm not even gonna try and work out how much development time this cd will save me, but I can't advise it enough - i really hope these guys bring more of them out. To be honest i've only looked through about half of these components so far, but i'm still blown away -
check out tool tip, the dynamic text 'stringthing', and the XML/actionscript converter especially - i didn't even realize i needed these things until now! The chapter on the movie loader is just a killer too. And there are also more 'crazy-stoopid' ones, like pattern generators and image modulators. What can i say, buy it and hope these authors bring out a sequel! Tons of fully-documented components, tons of examples, i'm a happy
designer!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, February 10, 2003

By	"bongoz" (staines, Middlesex United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

Im coming from a unix/c background with over 10 years experience and I found this book to be really good introduction to Flash MX. Its written very clearly and concsicely and full of useful examples and great ideas. I got my project up and running very quickly with some very pleasing results. Keep up the good work boys!