You’re not a still-wet-behind-the-ears Flash developer, but you’re no pure-ActionScript wizard either: At last there’s a book that addresses your needs as a budding Flash master. If you’ve mastered Flash basics and have a good understanding of animation, symbols, and basic ActionScript, this project-based tutorial from the folks at Lynda.com Training is the answer to your prayers. As you follow along with the book’s exercises and the CD’s QuickTime tutorials, you’ll build an entire Web site in Flash--in the process exploring all of the intermediate-level Flash techniques that you’ve been dying to get your hands on. You’ll learn how to dynamically load text and images, create scrollable text, build a preloader, add music and video, build a dynamic slide show, produce a feedback form, create a Flash plug-in detector, and more. Also covered are a slew of workflow enhancements, ActionScript 2.0--the improved ActionScript language introduced in Flash MX 2004--and more.

Nothing short of EXCELLENT
The guy that does this book is phenomenal. It takes true talent to be able to simplify concepts in Flash to the point where they are finally understandable, especially for non-programmers such as myself. I highly recommend this book (and the learning DVD if you can swing it) to those who want to delve into the advanced stuff inside of Flash.

This Book Is "H.O.T."
Shane Rebenschied’s Macromedia Flash MX 2004: Beyond the Basics Hands-On-Training (BTB:HOT) is the second book in a small series on teaching would-be developers how to effectively use Macromedia Flash in their web projects.

BTB:HOT is very well written. The author uses very clear instructions and appropriate graphics(screenshots) to illustrate the points being made. It is a very easy read, especially if you are weary of computer programming style books. The HOT series is written as if the instructor is standing beside you and telling you what you need to do.

This books was definitely written for the layman. This book was not written for someone who is looking to take Flash to the next level of professionalism. The book is very short (almost too short), and really doesn’t include very much discussion about the possibilities that can happen with a particular project.

After reading this book and working through the examples, I determined that there really isn’t anything new in this book that a seasoned web developer couldn’t figure out after reading the first book in the series.

To finish, very good book, but just for novices.

Great!
This book is perfect for the transformation from beginning to intermediate. The tutorials are incredibly thorough plus it guides you through making a whole web site with the most practical functions. I highly recommend this book. I wish they would make more!

Good tutorial book on Flash
This is the first book on Flash and this is the first time I am learning Flash MX2004 Pro. So far I have gone through almost a half of the book and I am very pleased with how this book is structured and its CD which contains the project files as I am learning this program with this book. For any beginner, I feel this book will help get you started on learning and using Flash MX2004. I purchased this book’s sister edition "Beyound the Basics" so that I can go one step further after I complete this book.

Good Intermediate Book, But Only Worth 3 Stars if You Can Program
Basically, this is a good book to get you from the initial HOT book on Flash to the more advanced tutorials found on the Macromedia Exchange site. The introduction to LoadVars and LoadMovieClip alone are worth the price of the book.

My only complaint, if you can call it that, would be that if you are coming from a programmer’s background, you will skim A LOT of pages. You’ve got to hand it to the author in how he really takes his time introducing programming to the neophytes, but I found myself actually reading only 1 page out of every 3-6.

If you already know how to program in any language, you could probably find the tutorials online to get by without this book, but the expenditure in time probably wouldn’t be worth the price of the book.

Written by a good teacher
Excellent book. The author has obviously taught classes and adopted a style that can be followed by any type of reader/student. If you are a novice you will have no trouble following each step-by-step lesson and learn the topics covered. When you are finished with the book your skill level will have improved.

If your skills are advanced or intermediate you will be able to get through each lesson quickly and learn another way of accomplishing something. The videos on the CD are good and delve deeper into the topics covered in the book.

One of the main goals of the book is to teach the concept of object oriented programming. As you go through the book you build a web site, or, better, an application that loads the different applications you learn about in the book, all tied together by a navigation section.

The use of winks and jokes may seem inappropriate to some, but it kept things light for me and I even laughed a couple of times.

I would recommend this book to anyone who needs to learn how to produce Flash applications. You must know the basics of Flash, and you will not learn about tying to databases or using XML or web services. This is why this is the perfect INTERMEDIATE Flash book.

The best programming book I’ve ever read
I have been through the ringer with programming books. I’ve taken the Microsoft cert. courses, I worked with computer systems since I was a kid (I’m 28 now) and I have bought any book you can imagine. This book, however, was the first book that actually gave me practical uses and told me exactly what I was doing. It made total sense and made me excited to program.

For the longest time I have been looking for a book that can explain to me when to use specific datatypes, functions, if/else statements and so on. This book was the first to do that and I have, in the two weeks since I have gotten the book, been able to land two flash web design projects with a couple more in the works as we speak.

This book has changed my programming life and has completely opened my eyes to the power of actionscript and many other programming languages.

I only wish that Shane and Lynda would write more books in this fashion using other languages like Java or C#.

This is a fantastic book and I am happy that I bought it.

Great Tool for the Intermediate Flash User
This is an excellent book. I have used the previous HOT books: Dreamweaver MX and Flash MX. However, this one gets into more interesting Flash techniques such as building a video and MP3 player. These books are always easy to follow and nothing is ever left unexplained. It’s as if they know where you might have made a mistake and show you how to fix it. I definitely recommend all of the Hands On Training series.

Never recieved.
I hope someone from Amazon sees this since I keep sending e-mail and get no response. I go to college and was going to be out of town so I had this book shipped to my parents place. Used a $30.00 coupon I got for signing up for their card. The book never showed up and now it’s back at Amazon..I got refunded $1.66 but I lost the $30.00 coupon and really had no use for their credit card. I would probably give the book a better review however I cant review something I don’t own. Please disregard this review’s rating...I have the "beginner version" for a H.O.T. Flash book and it was an excellent book as I’m sure this one is too. Well enough ranting...thanks for the great customer service Amazon ya just lost a customer here...I’ll update my review and rating when I pick up a copy from Barnes and Nobel.

H.O.T Books
This is the first book I have read from this author. I am very pleased with what this book taught and I have recommended it to many others.
It is in my opinion not a real intermediate book but more like part 2 of a beginner book for coding. I think it could have gotten a little deeper. That is most likely just my take. I was not new to flash. I bought this book as a refresher and as a book that would update me and get me ready for Studio 8. I suggest this book to anyone starting in flash or who have basic knowledge of flash and anyone wanting to get a good soldi grasp of action script.
The action script they use to teach is great and how they explain stuff is also wonderful. It is a bit slow but in the scheme of things would you rather him go fast and confuse you or slow and slightly bore you. I did play the movie files on fast forward and you could understand everything perfectly. So pick this book up and add it to your collection. I do believe it will be a great addition to anyones library.

grin
Okay, This book might be slow but again this was one of the books i used that open the doors to the macromedia field which I’m in now. This book is very basic and her videos which are in side the CD is the key really. The book is good the cd in this book is great. Perhaps one of the best ideas any author can do, make a cd with video. I’m not kidding i had a final to do in flash okay and me as a 3d designer i added 3d into my flash website for my school(keep in mind she doesnt teach 3d stuff in flash) believe me people i learned flash in 1 day basically i stayed up day and night and got hooked and learn the basic and pass with a big A. True story this is a great book and the author she did a hell of a great job. But like everyone said its slow if you read it, it’s very slow because she’s very basic and wants the person to really get it the first time instead of going back and trying to read the whole thing over again, but indeed this is a great book.

Liars
Nice book on Flash, but the authors lie when they say you can use this software on Windows ME. I had tried some time ago to install Flash MX 2004 on my home computer (which uses Windows ME) and found that my operating system was not supported. The book comes with a CD with a trial version of the software. Because they state explicitly in the book that this program WILL work, I tried installing it again. No dice. The authors should have been more conscientious in checkng their facts; this doesn’t give me confidence in the rest of their information.

Look No Further!
Your search is over. Hands down, the best "how to" book I have ever used! Superb and extremely pertinent exercises that are explained so clearly and consistently that even I, actually a Flash beginner who decided to stretch a bit and start off with an intermediate level book, was able to get into it and be productive immediately. The author’s method for creating a "modular" system is so smart that if you follow his lead, all your Flash based projects will download and render at lightening speeds all the while being very easily edited and updated. Bravo!

Good...but slow
I taught myself Flash using a variety of sources and I agree that finding "intermediate" books on Flash is quite difficult, so I was quite excited for this one. The instruction in the book is good and sometimes a bit too basic, but what kills me is the videos! (how many times do you need to explain the fact that the movie is running at 21fps??). I would also assume that most readers will be familiar with the concepts of cutting, pasting, creating new line breaks using return, and so forth.

Good concepts, but the explanations can be sped up quite a bit! (I’ve been running the movies at 2x the speed and understand him just fine).

Okay, now that that’s off my chest. Good book.

Perfect for intermediate users
After completing Yeungs intro to flash book, I thought the title of this one would fit me perfectly. I was not dissappointed.

Having conquered the basics of flash, the next logical step is actionscript. Shane picks up nicely where Roseanna left off by introducing you to coding a website using actionscript. I found myself constantly nodding and saying "Now I could do the same thing by creating multiple movies but using actionscript makes it so much easier and decreases the file size significantly". He doesn’t assume any prior knowledge of actionscript, and brilliantly walks you through the basics of each and every object he uses (even when the command is similiar to ones you have already used).

I don’t understand how the previous guy had problems understanding the author. I am by no means brilliant when it comes to flash and I found myself skipping over a lot of his explanations because they were too detailed. And the exercises are flawless. I did have some problems working some of them out, but when I retraced my steps I found that it was my error and not Shane’s (such as embedding fonts-- I followed the MAC directions when I had a PC). Another thing that guy said is that he doesn’t use the LoadMovie command. I don’t know how he missed the REASON why he doesn’t use that command (it is now or will soon be deprecated). He clearly says this in the book and introduces you to a nice alternative (MovieClipLoader class -- Not the myMC which was just the object that was instantiated from this class). My advice to that guy is Yah Roseanna’s book was great, but it’s time to move on man. That was an introductory book and I know it’s hard to learn new things after you have been taught one way, but this author will not lead you astray.

My only complaint is the material is dry. I mean ActionScripting just isn’t as fun as tweening movies and making pretty animations but that is something that is unavoidable. Shane’s writing style is refreshing and does a great deal to ease this boredom.