A detailed programming reference for developers who need a complete guide to developing sophisticated Flash-based applications. * While other books cover design-oriented topics in Flash, Flash Programming Unleashed covers Flash and its ActionScript language as a powerful application development tool. * The book includes unique coverage of using Flash to work with middleware, such as ColdFusion, XML, and ASP. * Appeals to the many ASP or Java developers who need to integrate their applications with Flash.

Macromedia Flash is the key to designing and delivering low-bandwidth animations, presentations, and Web sites. It is also a full-fledged programming API with scripting capabilities and server-side connectivity enabling the creation of engaging applications, sophisticated Web interfaces, and interactive training courses. Flash has the ability to easily integrate with, and add interactivity to, complex media types with powerful and intuitive tools. Developers can rapidly develop high performance, accessible content using pre-assembled building blocks; and they can expand their authoring capabilities with custom extensions from independent developers.

Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 Unleashed covers these high-end topics, providing a solid and complete reference for developers. The fundamentals are covered quickly in the first part of the book, while the majority of the content is devoted to the intermediate to advanced developers who need to learn about ActionScript and how Flash works with middleware, such as ColdFusion, ASP, and XML.

decent material for reference
I am a programmer who is just now diving into flash. I have purchased this. book as well as many others. Overall none of them give me what I want. I am constantly going back and forth between the books to find the answers to my questions. That said, this book has offered me some knowledge, but I have yet to see a book that is all encompassing.

Better than Flash help files, but not by much
The tutorials in this book were obviously not proofread as they are loaded with errors. If you know enough about flash to correct the errors than you can learn some things from this book, but I would highly recommend beginners to look elsewhere. The publishers site is also very poor. The book constantly refers the reader to go to the website for more tutorials, which is a complete runaround because they either don’t exist, or you have to uncover them from buried articles linking to other websites! This book could have been great with better proofreading, and a CD including WORKING tutorials.

The only reason I give it 2 stars instead of 1 is because it is a good overview of Flash capabilities. Just don’t expect to learn the nuts and bolts of all these features from this book.

This is a frustrating book
For those looking to take their Flash skills from beginner to intermediate status this book covers a lot of topics to help get you there such as OOP with AS 2.0, components, extending Flash, XML, and using Flash with server-side technologies. However, it is full of errors including typos and erroneous code. The latter problem is compounded by a corresponding lack of web suppport as other reviewers have pointed out. If this book had been edited and proofread more vigorously it could have been a great product for helping beginning Flashers take their skills to the next level.

Complete waste of money -- typos & poor web support
One example: Chapter 15 Page 398, NOTE: "For all examples, you can use your own external files, but for everything to be exactly as it is in the book, you should download the files for this chapter from the Web site."

(...)

Another example. Chapter 1, Page 15. (Yeah, lousy from the very beginning). The code will NOT work, since there’s a typo in there that involves improper capitalization, thus violating case sensitivity! I’m an intermediate-level ActionScript user, so I caught this right away, but a beginner will never realize what’s wrong.

The only value I can see to this book is that it has a chapter on integrating Flash with PHP, which is a rarity among books on server-side Flash. But I haven’t gotten to this chapter yet, so I don’t know whether they’ve loused this up too.

This is a typical SAMS book. In other words, a nearly complete waste of money.

Hard to follow with all the typographical errors
It’s hard to say if this is a good book or not, I spent so much time trying to figure out the exercises with all the errors that I couldnt even finish the book. Many of their Figures do not match the explanations and sometimes it was so confusing that I could not complete the exercise. I would definitely not recommned this book to anyone new to flash; what a waste of money!

Complete resource
With so much information to have to know in Flash, it is invaluable to have a book that you can pick up to learn a particular item. This book is packed with tips, tricks, resources, and little known facts about the ins and outs of Macromedia Flash MX 2004. In addition you get a friendly introduction to web services, remoting, and XML. Sams and David did a really good job with this one.

Lots of Detail But...
The writing’s pretty thin in places and the jargon comes heavy. Concepts are presented hierarchically rather than cognitively (e.g. the chapter on components immediately dives into how to insert them into a Flash movie without first explaining what they are). Also, be warned that the sample files and source code isn’t easily accessible -- there’s no link given to the book’s website, and if you go looking at the publisher’s site you get a large zip file that’s missing files referenced in the text.

If you’re already extremely familiar with Flash MX, this book may be fine for you. If you’ve had only passing contact with Flash, or are upgrading your knowledge from a previous version, save yourself the grief.