This is a great book for the beginning to intermediate Flash user. I found this to be one of the best Flash basics books I have read. The topics and projects are targeted at someone who has no Flash expierence.

The tech bookstore project demonstrated throughout this book was well selected. It is a project that would be a practical 'real world' example. All aspects of this project are covered - from creating the initial graphics, to using ActionScript to make it all work.

Beyond the Flash basics of creating graphics, understanding the timeline and skills that are common to most Flash books, this book goes a step further. It demonstrates how to use audio and video in Flash, basics of ActionScript, using the built in Flash components - and my favorite - incoporating dynamic data.

The CD-ROM that is included with the book contains all the files needed to complete and/or follow along with all of the projects in the book.

If you are a teacher looking for a book to use in teaching Flash, I highly recommend this one. It is well organized and would be ideal for the classroom setting.

In summary, I was very pleased with the organization, content and quality of this book.

This was my second book in the Training From the Source series. Although not much of a confidence builder at first, this book turned out to be worth the month it took me to get through all the information and exercises (mostly on my weekends). It goes over the different aspects and program capabilities in an on-the-job-training approach. There were times when I got a bit frustrated but it only lasted until a couple pages later where things would for the most part tie in. Beyond the general tutorials and function definitions, the author did a really good job of providing examples and gave some pretty good ideas on how to continue with Flash into my own websites, which is rare. Flash is a complex program I think, and this book did a great job of taking it apart and putting it back together in a stylish website with movie clips, video and sound.

As I expected from most "training from the source" books, it covers most of the basic ingredients in flash; hence, it is comprehensive for beginners and intermediate users. However, as mentioned in some other reviews, the instructions are not consistent. The numbered sentences in bold often give the reader an overview of what one is about to do, even if they sound like they are giving the reader the actual instructions (correcting this redundancy may shorten the book, and lower the price!). The succeeding sentences then give step-by-step instructions on what to actually do. In some instances, however, the sentences in bold were the instructions themselves. Consistency would have made everything clearer. Moreover, some explanations and instructions were a little vague--which file, layer, or frame was I supposed to be working on? At other times, library or stage items were missing after being asked to open a particular file. It was quite confusing. I honestly think the book needs a 2nd edition.

The book made for easy reading, and I was able to knock it out in just a few days. The biggest problem I had was the inconsistent way of how the step by step instructions work. At the beginning of each step, they have a "summary" of what you are going to do in bold, then it proceeds to give detailed instructions on how to do it. For the most part, this holds true, but sometimes, the instructions picked up from the bold part, having expected you to have performed that already??? Also found several invalid references to variables.. and other mistakes, such as telling you to add labels to specific frames, before telling you to add keyframes at those positions. It had the feel of a step by step book, that nobody bothered taking the time to test before publishing. Other than that, it was an okay book, and had a realistic in depth example to work with and build upon.

If you are used to Adobe CLASS IN A BOOK series, you will like the way this book walks you through examples. This book has great supplement(CD) and examples but it was really hard for me to understand things. I hope author revise this book carefully and make it more understandable on next edition. I don't want to recommend this book to any beginners.

It is hard for me to criticize this book, because the example project is practical and interesting. The directions are pretty straightfoward, giving users a good command of working with 1. layers and 2. media assets like video clips and graphics.
However, this book is not the best for complete Flash beginners for several reasons. First, for complete beginners the Flash work environment is very complicated. My experience with Dreamweaver, Photoshop and HTML carried over only marginally to Flash. The book takes a very plodding approach to acquainting new users to how Flash "works." 120 pages into the book, I felt like I still had no clue WHY the directions were telling me to do certain things. For example, why do I have to put labels on the timeline? Why do I have to switch between different editing modes? etc.
The book is not very well edited, and the instructions themselves could be clearer. For example, the paraphrased step and the instructions that follow it often muddle the point of what you are doing.
For a better understanding of the "what's" and "why's" of Flash, I reccomend the Sam's Teach Yourself book on the subject. It is a better global view of the Flash authoring environment so that beginners can start projects with a better understanding of what you can accheive with Flash. Reviewers seem to enjoy it a lot. Following a better introduction to Flash, I will return to deHaan's book and will likely get more out of it.

This is one of the best training books I have ever used. The book is targeted at someone with no Flash authoring experience, who wants to learn the most current version of Flash, MX 2004 and the Flash 7 Player. The author picked a sample project which she uses to illustate a wide variety of Flash authoring techniques. ...

In addition to teaching the basic technique, the author also explains how to organize and name the parts of the document. The CD ROM has the lesson document in all it's versions, so that you can jump into the lesson sequence at any point.

The author understands how to teach. The planning and organization of this book really stands out - you will learn a wide variety of Flash techniques in reasonable amount of time.

I got this book because it was I think one of the first ones out there. Sometimes that worries me about computer books because you know they were written on testing software that isn't complete, which can mean the book has a lot of problems. That didn't seem to be the case here though, apart from some minor issues like typos and stuff.

This book had a lot more in it than I expected. I have seen other tutorial books that only cover Flash and really basic ActionScript. But this book had a LOT in it for a beginner book, and a ton of ActionScript! And by the end it all made sense to me, which I was surprised about. If you are considering getting this book, I really recommend it. You will be taught in an excellent way, easy to follow and understand plus there is supporting material.

I just finished a course that used this book, and the book (and the course!) was really good. All of us actually finished the application without a problem, and it was a lot of fun too and really interesting. We learned a lot about Flash, and I feel like I'm ready to create my own sites using these techniques. We built a lot of very useful things with this book, so I think it's a keeper. If you are looking for a reference or just how to do drawing and animation, this isn't the right book for you though. That's the main issue, is that there isn't the same level of information as a reference book.

I'm not sure if I am reading the same book as these other guys here. I bought this book because I wanted to build an web application with Flash MX 2004 (not the only animate!), and learn the kinds of things it can do. You need this version of Flash to do that... and at least that's what this book does!

I really liked how it took some of the more complex things in Flash and made them really simple, which I don't think can too easy and why some of the steps are long. Maybe itis, I dont know. But I could follow along and I'm just starting out and I wasn't really bored by this book or thinking that it was confusing or anything. I'm glad I didn't read those because I wanted to build an application including all the different things and use the things in 2004 to do it and that's what this book does and you learn lots.

Boy, was this book a pain! I had to slog through numerous detailed examples of creating user interface graphics and buttons before ever getting to animate anything. That book is wayyyy too detailed and focused on one application - creating a UI for a "rich application" web site. Also, the book is often inaccurate, especially for Mac users. I was ready to forget about Flash forever.

Instead, I bought "Macromedia Flash MX 2004: Hands On Training" by Rosanna Cheung, and it turned me totally around. I can't believe how much difference a book can make in revealing the beauty of a piece of software. It starts right out with animation, and it is aimed at the right level of detail (at least for me). Also, it has very effective sidebars to thoroughly explain concepts as they come up, so it can be used as a reference (unlike the other book). Thanks, Rosanna!

I liked this book because it really put together the most useful things a person needs to know starting out building a site in a way I could understand it. I didn't expect this much, so I was pleasantly surprised in it. You don't learn how to build a weak site that only has a menu, some buttons and a bit of text, pictures or whatever, but you actually have streaming video, loading data, forms, and all that stuff - and it's even understandable. So I really think this book would be good for a lot of people because using it I got my own site up in only two weeks.

This book seems like a great fit into my learning curve. I really like how easy it is to follow along with and tells me exactly what to do. I'm using regular Flash MX, so I'm happy that I can use the book without upgrading like the other couple books I bought. I hate not being able to follow along and get all confused just to find out I have the wrong Flash or something. I'm only about 3/4 way through the book, but I am very happy with how things are working out. You start out by learning the easy things like graphics, simple animation and so forth and progress through to easy ActionScript, do some things with it and now I'm going through the harder ActionScript. That is intuitive to me, which compels me to write the review. This book is perfect for me starting out with Flash for the first time because I was just plain confused trying to find online tutorials that never spelled it out clearly, and the other books I have that are pretty confusing to try and find what you need. Good work! I finally feel like I'm learning something.

It's so hard to choke your way through this material. After four chapters the author has yet to let us run our work to see what we're doing. Tageting your concentration on a single task is a much more effective way to build enterprise applications. There are so many steps on so many pages that you forget some of them or why you did them at all.

We spent so much time creating buttons and graphics for the menu in the sample application. But why didn't the author just have us use the new menu object in 2004 pro? I think that the author is used to previous versions of Flash and all of the tricks they had to use. I don't want to learn those tricks. I want to use the new features in Flash today, and I want the features to be simple to use and hard to forget. Tricks seldom work that way.

Unfortunately, I think the authors were trying to make this book for both Flash or Flash Pro. If I had to build a menu, and some of the other objects in the book, the way they describe in the book I'd go back to using Java clients and Swing. We bought Pro because we went to be able to build web apps. I want to use Pro.

Not all is bad. You can pick up a lot of tips, but there has to be a better way than simply working through the book front to back. You may find yourself gazing at the pages without really concentrating on what you're doing, or searching for the Character button with your wife for several minutes. An audio tape, or a small video in the corner of the screen would go an awful long way towards alleviating some of the pain, and would be much more effective.

I just finished working through this book on the holidays, and it is very easy to follow along and I learned a lot more about Flash in the end. I'm surprised in how much was covered in the 500ish pages, and it has made me less nervous about using Flash in my company. But I'm very impressed with how easy it was made and how much the website you build has in it. I expected to have a tough time because I don't know anything, but I made my way through with no problems. I even emailed with some extra questions and got an answer the next day. I have some of the older macromedia training from the source books on different programs, and this one follows the same format which I like. If you don't mind big long tutorials, then I recommend this book. The only reason I subtract a star is because I think the chapter on ActionScript was too long to be a single chapter, and it would be better in shorter amounts for the readers.

I bought this book after reading Macromedia's "Training from the Source" book on Dreamweaver MX 2004, which I enjoyed. Unfortunately I found this book disappointing. The book focuses on developing a web site in Flash, something which I have no interest in doing. The web site is bare-bones and rather boring, and it is hard to sustain interest in working through the tutorials. I quit about five chapters in. Perhaps I'm missing something, but why would anyone want to use Flash to create a web site? To enhance a web site, yes. But this book focuses on building a web site from scratch exclusively within Flash. Perhaps this is the trend of the future, and I'm simply behind the times, but this book just didn't address my interest in learning Flash. I'm not interested in using it to do what Dreamweaver does well enough, and with much more ease!

I also didn't think that this book was as well written as the Dreamweaver book in the same series (but by a different author)). In the Dreamweaver book the steps in the tutorials are presented in bold face, followed by more detailed comments on the significance of the particular actions taken. In the book under review here, the format is superficially the same, but the instructions in bold are not really instructions. They are brief introductions to the steps to be taken without being detailed and specific enough to follow. The text that follows contains the actual instructions. This is needlessly confusing and awkward.