Macromedia Flash Professional 8: Includes Exercise Files and Demo Movies [With CDROM]

by Gonzalez, James and James Gonzalez

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321293886
• ISBN13: 9780321293886
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Peachpit Press
• Length: 624 Pages
• Weight: 2.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Great Book for Helping Someone Learn Flash

I got this book for a course that I was taking on Flash. It is a great book and I am happy the teacher recommended it. The chapters are arranged in easy to follow exercises that teach all the basics of Flash. I really liked this style of teaching because it forces you to open up Flash and do the exercises. Much more useful than a book that you just sit and read. The author of the book is also very good about telling you multiple ways of doing something. In the course of the exercises there are little colored boxes that will talk about how you could have done the above action this way or this way or this way. The fact that these tips are usually separate is nice if you don't care and want to skip the additional information. So far I am about 3/4 the way through the course and the book and have been very happy with it. A great book; especially for a newbie that doesn't have any programming background.

BUY THIS BOOK!!!

If you are new to flash and want to learn it, then you have to buy this book. Compared to all the other Flash training books, this is by far the best.

Couldn't Be Any Easier!

Just wanted to say that I bought this book with no prior experience with Flash or Studio 8. I found the various modules of Studio 8 confusing so I decided to concentrate on just one and that being Flash 8. Hands on Training is the way to go. Gonzalez made learning the program easy. However, after going through the book, remember that you have to do your part too. Practice! Practice! Practice! Just reading the book or any book for that matter and then putting it on the shelf won't do you any good. Very happy with this book and will buy more HOT titles in the future.

Learn all the Flash 8 basics in this great book!

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...