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Product Description
Macromedia is currently a red-hot topic in the web development community. Macromedia estimates that over 3 million computer browsers now have the Flash player - that's roughly 80% of web browsers - and in addition, Macromedia has an aggressive and open licensing policy which guarantees that millions more Flash-ready browsers are installed worldwide. The guide's "how to do everything" format simplifies this complicated product and additional content from the book, and images for the book's tutorials will be posted on their website. This product enables web and interface designers with little or no programming knowledge to create fully interactive and fast loading website elements such as buttons, menu, animation and interfaces. The book covers everything from building rollovers, to adding motion, colour and sound to text, to creating interactive drop-down menus, to building animation sequences.
Amazon.com Review
Well, maybe not everything, but there is much you can do with Flash 5, and How To Do Everything with Macromedia Flash 5 can show you just about all of it. It's an excellent book for those new to Flash or with only some experience. Many concepts are well illustrated, using screen shots to help explain the technique. Each chapter begins with a bulleted list of the goals in the chapter, clearly outlining the targets of discussion.
For designers with some Flash experience, the sections on "Assigning ActionScripts to Buttons and Frames" and "Building Interactive Movies" are where both Flash and this book begin to really shine. Understanding object-oriented programming and learning to use ActionScript are vital talents for anything more than pedestrian Flash work, and these sections provide a solid foundation on which to build. Numerous simple examples demonstrate useful concepts that can be applied to larger projects, such as using buttons to control the playback of not only the Flash movie in which the button is embedded but other movies as well ("nested movie clips"), and using variables and strings in scripts. While the book doesn't come with a CD, it does include some terrific features such as a 23-page index, and an appendix listing a plethora of Flash sites that offer developer assistance, code examples, and links to some of the best Flash sites on the Web. Each chapter is clearly written and well illustrated. If the book could make coffee, then it really could do everything. --Mike Caputo Topics covered: Sixteen chapters spanning 500 pages cover everything from early planning and how it affects approaching the project, exploring the interface, and basic Flash principals; to creating and animating in Flash, creating artwork for import, using such Flash features as symbols, libraries, and instances; and on to animation techniques and interactivity.
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