These guys obviously have a lot of technical knowledge, but when it comes to actual explanation of the concepts, they fail. Hierarchically speaking, their instruction is gibberish. They jump from vocabulary to examples to anecdotes without giving an overall coherent paradigm for understanding of most major concepts.

In other words, their instruction is valid when taken piecemeal, but does not equip the user to understand or implement correct systems of thinking for the program as a whole.

Furthermore, the speed of instruction and depth of explanation varies wildly from chapter to chapter.

Addendum: 2 people commented that there are sample files and included two different urls. I am downloading as I write this and will try them out. Still feel like I wasted time & energy to get to this point. The logic of not including the url in the book eludes me. I actually went to the publishers site and sent an email to "feedback", but it came back as undeliverable. So their web site links don't work. Makes me wonder about other possible errors, omissions or frustrations in the lessons.

This book might actually be helpful if it included the sample files. I've just spent 45 minutes, reading and rereading the intro, chapter beginnings, etc., hoping that the samples files could be downloaded someplace. Nothing.

It should mention/warn before you buy the book, that the samples are not available. No mention of online download, nor does the book include a disc. Just have to imagine what it's like to do the lessons.


Luckily, I've used Flash MX 2004 and can kind of understand the lessons, but it's a bit dizzying without actual files to work on. This is a very frustrating experience especially for a pricey book.

I shake my head when I think about the amount of planning that has to go into a book of this caliber. They couldn't have done a better job keeping track of the ideas introduced in early chapters and building on them in succeeding chapters until they are well ingrained.

The tone is good -- occasional bits of levity but not so much that it becomes grating.

I came to this book with some familiarity with Photoshop and Illustrator, but none whatsoever with Flash. I'm nearly done with the book and am ready to take on the Flash projects I have in mind. I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning Flash.

Having read all the positive reviews, I had a lot of expectations for this book, however, I was bitterly disappointed. I'm only on page 26 of the book and I've already become frustrated with missing steps in the instructions, inconsistent content in the digital files, not to mention, the book didn't even tell us where to download the files and I had to find them myself. Maybe PC users aren't experiencing the same troubles I'm having, as the book seems to be based entirely on the PC version with some Mac shortcuts mentioned as afterthoughts, seemingly for marketing purposes; however, some inconsistencies are doubtlessly cross-platform.

On the Mac, menu items seem to be named differently, functions don't seem to behave the same way, as least not according to the instructions in the book. But more frustrating is that the contents of the example files do not correspond to the ones mentioned in the book, as vague as the descriptions are in the book to begin with - eg. the book gives an example of 2 items on the stage, when we open the file, there are 3. Insert Layer is somehow misnamed as New Layer,it's not a big deal, we can figure it out, but is this kind of error forgivable in an instruction book we PAY extra for? When we add a new Layer "2" to the file, according to the book, it becomes Layer 5 in the software; let's not forget to mention that the book's "Layer 1" layer is somehow named "Box" in the actual digital file, what is going on here?? Now, this is not a platform issue, the digital files and the book simply do not match. The remaining instructions from the book on that exercise obviously cannot be followed as so many things are completely different, and this is only Chapter 1.

I can forgive books on general theories and analysis being vague and inconsistent, but this is suppose to be a step-by-step software instruction book, is it so hard for the digital files to correspond to what is printed in the book? Can't the authors at least take a few minutes to double-check the differences between the Mac and PC versions before claiming that this book works for both?

I'm going to try to guess through the inconsistent and frustrating examples in order to learn the software, assuming things do not get worse after Chapter 1, but I do resent having to make extra effort for all this guesswork from an instruction book. Time might be better spent learning Flash off the web.

EDIT.
Despite some inconsistencies, having read a bit further, the book does offer a lot of helpful information, and a lot of effort put forth by the authors to make learning Flash as painless as possible. If the reader has the patience and determination to persevere through some of the inevitable errors in such a large volume, the book does give a decent overview of Flash. In retrospect, I would give the book a 3.5 stars rather than 1. 8/28/2008

As a true Flash newbie, I can't recommend this book. I found the sample lessons to be too much too soon and, in some cases, steps were left out. There wasn't enough time spent at the beginning on learning your way around the timeline and information about optimizing and publishing your move are like an afterthought at the end of the book. The book also bills itself as 'for designers' and yet the samples used to demonstrate Flash principles are poorly designed.