If you’ve never used Flash before and youre looking for a book that will give you a rock solid grounding in Flash MX 2004, then this is the title for you. This book uses a series of structured exercises to give you the broad, solid foundation knowledge you need to start your exploration of Flash from scratch. Foundation Flash MX 2004 uses a proven sequential, detailed, and accessible tutorial style to ensure that you’ll retain your learning and be able to draw on it throughout your Flash career. Macromedia Flash MX 2004 is an exciting product, providing rich creative opportunities for Flash designers and developers at all levels of ability and experience. No single book can hope to provide adequate coverage of all aspects of Flash MX 2004, which is why this book focuses relentlessly on the core skills that you need to get you started: understanding the interface; familiarizing yourself with the creative tools and their capabilities; grasping the relationships between the different components that make up a Flash movie; getting insight into how to put all the pieces together and hook them up with ActionScript. All these aspects (and much more) are covered in detailed tutorials and exercises, reinforced with a case study that runs throughout the book to apply everything in a real-world context. Covers both Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004! Summary of contents: Chapter 1 Flash Movie Essentials Chapter 2 The Flash Tools Panel Chapter 3 Flash Symbols and Libraries Chapter 4 Managing Content Chapter 5 Enhancing Your Appearance Chapter 6 Motion Tweening Chapter 7 Shape Tweening Chapter 8 Masks and Masking Chapter 9 Advanced Animation and Commands Chapter 10 Actions and Interactions Chapter 11 Intelligent Actions Chapter 12 Sound and Video Chapter 13 Optimizing Chapter 14 Publishing Chapter 15 Intermediate ActionScript, Part 1 Chapter 16 Intermediate ActionScript, Part 2 Chapter 17 High-level Site Design Chapter 18 Futurescape

If you have never used Flash before and you are looking for a book that will give you a rock solid grounding in Flash MX 2004, then this is the title for you. This book uses a series of structured exercises to give you the broad, solid foundation knowledge you need to start your exploration of Flash from scratch. Foundation Macromedia Flash MX 2004 uses a proven sequential, detailed, and accessible tutorial style to ensure that you’ll retain your learning and be able to draw on it throughout your Flash career.

Macromedia Flash MX 2004 is an exciting product, providing rich creative opportunities for Flash designers and developers at all levels of ability and experience. No single book can hope to provide adequate coverage of all aspects of Flash MX 2004, which is why this book focuses relentlessly on the core skills that you need to get you started: understanding the interface; familiarizing yourself with the creative tools and their capabilities; grasping the relationships between the different components that make up a Flash movie; getting insight into how to put all the pieces together and hook them up with ActionScript. All these aspects (and much more) are covered in detailed tutorials and exercises, reinforced with a case study that runs throughout the book to apply everything in a real-world context.

This book uses a series of structured exercises to give you the broad, solid foundation knowledge you need to start your exploration of Flash from scratch.

If you’ve never used Flash before and if you’re looking for a book that will give you a rock solid grounding in Macromedia Flash MX 2004, then this is the title for you. This book uses a series of structured exercises to give you the broad, solid foundational knowledge you need to start your exploration of Flash from scratch. Foundation Flash MX 2004 uses a proven sequential, detailed, and accessible tutorial style to ensure that you’ll retain your learning and be able to draw on it throughout your Flash career.

Macromedia Flash MX 2004 is an exciting product, providing rich creative opportunities for Flash designers and developers at all levels of ability and experience. No single book can hope to provide adequate coverage of all aspects of Flash MX 2004, which is why this book focuses relentlessly on the core skills that you need to get you started: understanding the interface; familiarizing yourself with the creative tools and their capabilities; grasping the relationships between the different components that make up a Flash movie; getting insight into how to put all the pieces together and hook them up with ActionScript. All these aspects (and much more) are covered in detailed tutorials and exercises, reinforced with a case study that runs throughout the book to apply everything in a real-world context.

OOP training is an after-thought
I purchased this book to learn the latest OOP programming techniques available in Flash MX 2004. However, the author spent the bulk of each chapter explaining how to do something using techniques appropriate to versions prior to MX 2004, then made a statement about there was a better way to do it. He then spent very little time telling you what to modify to make it more OOP oriented or more efficient. You can’t skip ahead and just look at the "better way" since all explanations of the "better way" were based on modifications to the original example.

Obviously, the author just did a "quickie" upgrade of a previous version of this book so he could sell more copies. I don’t need to waste my time learning how to do something the hard/inefficient way. With the cost of the book, the author should have written a new version appropriate to the upgrades made under MX 2004 to support OOP instead of just adding a few OOP comments here and there to a previous version of the book.

Avoid this book if you want to learn good OOP techniques!

more of a tutorial than reference
If you want a beginners guide to learning Flash, this is a good one. Explains steps in detail, and rather clearly. There are a few frustrating errata, but they are well documented on the publishers website. If you are looking for a reference text rather than a hold-my-hand guide, look elsewhere. I rate this 4/5 stars.

GET THIS BOOK!
If ever you wanted to learn Flash® the quick and simple way, THIS BOOK IS IT!!
It’ll be your bestest buddy from start to finish. And don’t let the thickness of "Beaker" (yep, I gave it a name) put you off ... if you’re like me and you have extensive knowledge of Illustrator®, Photoshop®, GoLive®, plus the now defunct LiveMotion®, and all their terminologies, you can be forgiven for skipping certain sections.
Flash® is here to stay and, from what I am hearing, it gets even easier to use with each product update.
Come on. Jump on board! You wont regret it!

GET THIS BOOK!
If ever you wanted to learn Flashý the quick and simple way, THIS BOOK IS IT!!
It’ll be your bestest buddy from start to finish. And don’t let the thickness of "Beaker" (yep, I gave it a name) put you off ... if you’re like me and you have extensive knowledge of Illustratorý, Photoshopý, GoLiveý, plus the now defunct LiveMotioný, and all their terminologies, you can be forgiven for skipping certain sections.
Flashý is here to stay and, from what I am hearing, it gets even easier to use with each product update.
Come on. Jump on board! You wont regret it!