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Flash Recipes For The Advanced User
Peachpit Press’ Visual QuickStart Guides series of books for program newbies are often the first, best choice if you have the need to get up to speed furious and fast. Their one-page pictures-and-text recipe format has proven so successful over the years that Peachpit have now extended it to books for those with more advanced needs, and Macromedia Flash 5 Advanced for Windows & Macintosh is one of the first of the QuickPro Guides.
Its approach is identical to its sibling, Flash 5 for Windows & Macintosh, but Flash 5 Advanced’s single page recipes are better suited to more ambitious users. The book is split into five parts, with appendices: Approaching Advanced Animation, Understanding ActionScript, Navigating Timelines and Communicating, Transforming Graphics and Sound, Working with Information. Three appendices provide further information on ActionScript objects, actions and key codes in easily accessible table form. That is broad coverage even if it is not particularly deep.
There is room for a number of different approaches to teaching Flash, and the program itself is vast and deep, especially when you consider all the technologies that merge with it in daily practice. If you began learning Flash through the Flash 5 QuickStart Guide, then this book might suffice as an effective leg up to the next level. But if you are trying to gain greater understanding from another direction then you might find Flash 5 Advanced a little frustrating, as I did.
It is a great reference for code recipes and quick fixes to typical problem situations, such a Detecting Movie-Clip Collisions or Tweening Dynamic Text, and its appendices summarising Object Methods and Properties and the Actions Category are welcome and useful, but if you really want to understand how to take what Russell Chun shows you and work all the possible variations then you will be disappointed.
Macromedia Flash 5 Advanced is a great supplement to a more in-depth reference work, such as the essential ActionScript: The Definitive Guide, but it is not a replacement for it by any means. If you can only afford one book on scripting Flash then make it Colin Moock’s. If you appreciate the recipe and quick fix approach then check Russell Chun’s book out as your next purchase.
The Book:
- Title: Macromedia Flash 5 Advanced for Windows & Macintosh Visual QuickPro Guide
- Author: Russell Chun
- Publisher: Peachpit Press
- Published: 2001
- Pages: 410
- Illustrations: Monochrome
- CD-ROM: Yes
- ISBN: 0201726246
The Chapters:
- Building Complexity
- Working with Video and 3D
- Getting a Handle on ActionScript
- Advanced Buttons and User Input
- Managing Flash Communication
- Managing Outside Communication
- Controlling the Movie Clip
- Controlling Sound
- Controlling Information Flow
- Controlling Text
- Manipulating Information
- Managing Coontent and Trouble-Shooting
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