How to Wow with Flash [With CDROM]

by Colin Smith

Wouldn t it be great if you could have one of the world s most accomplished and sought after Flash teachers sitting next to you at your computer as you navigate the infinite possibilities of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321426495
• ISBN13: 9780321426499
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Peachpit Press
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 2.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 9.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Wow!!

How to Wow with Flash Colin Smith ISBN: 1-590596196 I really enjoyed this book. This is a must have for your Flash reference library. He summarizes his section on easing by saying that "to increase the speed or (ease-in)" you use negative numbers. To "slow speed or (ease-out)" you use positive numbers for the ease in / out slider located in the properties inspector. This is an example of the clear and concise easy to remember way he talks about Flash. Not only does he write clearly, he tells you practical industry secrets that will enable you to impress clients. I wish there were more books like this. This book steps you into working with code in a painless way if you're coming from a design background. The book and .FLA files provided with the CD are beautiful art pieces. There is a section on animation, highlighting squash and stretch, lip-synching, and anticipation with Chris Georgenes of Adobe. This section emphasizes that you can move the rotation point of the movie clip to the bottom of the animation when the object reaches the bottom of the squash and stretch cycle. This gives the animation that extra punch. He really concentrates on the little details that take something good and make it polished!! The author shows you how to make a preloader but, not the ugly bar kind. You can take any logo with this method and mask it and hook it up to the preloader code and have it fill. He sprinkles little known keyboard shortcuts throughout the book. For example, if you want to skew just one side of something he tells you to hold down the alt key (PC) to lock the opposite side of the skew. Other ideas about dealing with Flash 8 features such as object drawing are included. If you draw something with object drawing set to on which reverts Flash back to the way it used to work in Flash 7 ( where it cuts out shapes laid on top of each other). The author suggests that you just hit Ctrl + B (PC) and the shape will be as if you didn't have the drawing object on. Colin shows you how to soften fill edges, and make a spotlight mask utilizing checking the bitmap caching checkbox and a little code for the mask using the setMask function. There is a discussion of ActionScript variables. Not just the theory; he shows you how to use them with game counters, to record a web viewer's actions such as clicking on a link, and changing behavior based on whether a condition is true or false. Using the _alpha property to show viewers visited links is covered as well. The video section is very solid. It covers green screen, alpha channels, making a video look like a cartoon, old time movie effects with scratchy lines and flickering, and IPOD like silhouettes. He gives an overview of the fundamentals of video such as: when using green screen, check encode alpha channel checkbox, try to achieve the best quality without increasing the file size, choose 30 fps for video used for broadcast. Some of the other things included in this book are: a Flash form c

Awesome...

...I admit I contributed a chapter to this book, so I will only speak to the rest of the book's content which I hadn't seen until it shipped. Colin, great job man! You covered a lot of valuable topics that the majority of Flash users can benefit from. The layout is clean and a pleasure to read through. I noticed several people at the Peachpit bookstore at Flash Forward (Austin, TX) flipping through the pages for well over 10 minutes! In some cases, reading entire chapters and then purchasing the book. That says a lot, especially when they are within arms reach of 25 other books on Flash. Bravo! -chris

Just what I needed

I've been using Flash in my daily development process for over 3 years. I wish a book like this was available then, I would be a much more efficient Flash programmer than I am today. I applaud Colin for his writing skills and including the basics of what you need to develop good working habits in Flash. It is easy to follow along the steps and the code he includes in the CD is easy to track and understand, even if you're not a code geek. After reading this book, I've applied his techniques to projects that were already in progress and they are farther along in development than if I did things "my way". The sites run more efficiently and are more exciting than what I was doing before. I now have more time to think of creative and interactive ways to enhance the site, than I am to the functionality of the program. Thanks, Colin!

Wow I am Impressed

I am a Professional designer and I am used to the steep learning curve that comes with Adobe Programs (they are robust), How to Wow in Flash flattened that curve and made it not only easy to follow along but because of the way the lessons are presented I was able to trouble shoot and fix any problem I encountered do to typical novice mistakes or bad spelling in scrypts. That is the real joy and Wow behind this book. I now have an understanding of the program so that I can play and be creative all in a few weeks not years. As always Colin Smith has come through again with the high quality teaching experence I have come to expect from his web page,Photo Shop Cafe, and other books and CD's. If by the odd chance I run into a problem he quickly directs me towards the solution.

Great Flash book for Beginners and Intermediate readers

This book will teach you a lot of the fancy effects that design agencies are using in hi-profile work, but not forgetting to build a firm foundation on how they work and when to use them. I quickly found myself learning UI time savers and ways to achieve very interesting "unique" effects that added that extra pop to my work. Colin took learning Flash to a whole other level by walking you through the steps, providing opinions and letting the reader know where to extend a technique and build on it. You will learn how to build DVD presentations, advanced animations, special effects, dynamic and static photo galleries among a variety of other topics. As a bonus the books rounds out the learning with an XML photo gallery and a Flash emailer that you are quickly able to install in your movie which allows your viewers/readers to provide quick and painless feedback. I am not really sure why the reviewer before me did not like the book, but at the same time it is not really written for advanced Flash developers and I am glad, there are already enough books that try to teach you everything. Instead this book stays on topic, hits all the expectations I had when considering and reading the back of the book... and most of all lit the creative fire for the reader that will now want to go out and spend hours in Flash to extend all of the knowledge they have just obtained.