Author Jeanette Stallons has spent a lot of time thinking about application development with Flash MX--so that you don’t have to! Instead, you can get right down to doing: Drawing on the wealth of information Jeanette has developed as technical lead for Macromedia’s Authorized Training curriculum, this volume offers a series of step-by-step tutorials that will have you using all of Flash MX 2004’s new features in the process of developing a dynamic real-world Flash application. Along the way, you’ll learn about using ActionScript 2.0, the Flash UI component framework and dynamic data, screens, MovieClip objects, and more. In the end, you’ll come away with a solid grounding in Flash theory and technique that will propel your own projects to stunning results. The accompanying DVD includes all of the project files required to complete the book¿s exercises as well as a trial version of Flash MX 2004.

Hate it
Picked up this book years ago and hated it. Macromedia should be ashamed of how bad this book is. You would think a company can turn out a decent instructional book about their own product! After conversing with many people in the Information Architecture and Web Usability fields, I am discovering that many do not find Macromedia books in general to be helpful, especially when compared to others in the market. As for me, I will never buy another book published by Macromedia.

God awful!
The author and editor obviously did not earn a degree in communication, but programming. By the middle of the third chapter the author must believe the reader is a certified programmer.

I am reasonability intelligent; I am a CPA with BFA and BBA degress, but gee, only after reading her paragraphs 4 to 5 times do I get it. And her follow along examples are torture. More time and paper should have been devoted to thorough scipt examples rather than abridged.

Great shot from Macromedia Press!!!
[**this review was made by Denise Maitan from AIR User Group**]With step-by-step exercises, explanations, notes,tips and complementary pictures, Macromedia’s book "Flash Mx Professional 2004 - application development" encompasses the simplest functions flash offers through to the most complex, like web services, XML e remoting services.
Furthermore, the book is accompanied by a DVD-Rom with files containing prepared exercises and 30-day trial versions of Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004.
The book is really well structured, with instructions before each exercise detailing what the reader will learn, how long each exercise should take and where to find the related exercises on the DVD.
The book is recommended for whom desires greater knowledge of Actionscript programming. It also give guidance in the use of dynamic + interactive product applications - through the RIA (Rich Internet Application) concept - and provides preparation for Macromedia development certification. A very good training manual.

Author Got a Little Lost in Own Steps
I’ll be brief. It teaches efficient programming and good tips for beginner programmers but don’t try to follow the steps outlined in the book. Seems that author got lost in his own steps. For example page 144 step 8 doesn’t indicate that you should place the onChanged code in the "calcObject.as" file, instead it says that you sould place it after the onKillFocus event. I lost a lot of time trying to figure out why my program wasn’t working (wanting to practice debugging) until I finally looked at the files in the DVD. I’d say just read the book and test using the files that came in the DVD if things don’t work.

good book
This is actually a very good book. The flow is a little wierd, but it covers a lot of ground not covered in other books. I found the conversion from ActionScript 1.0 to ActionScript 2.0 not a problem, except in one area - flash remoting and ActionScript 2.0. But for flash remoting I have found the MM docs almost totally useless and no other sources adequate. Coming from a programming background, I found Stallons’ treatment of some of the many AS quirks, and that strange Flash object, the MovieClip, and how to use it in AS, very helpful. I guess the standard book padding of loops, conditional logic, functions, objects, etc. is unavoidable, but I could do without it. I could really have used a better coverage of the 2.0 components, but there again the MM docs are pretty bad on this topic and I haven’t found a book that does cover these.

So I would recommend this book, but the jump may be hard for a first time programmer who is using AS 2.0 and needs to rely heavily on the "copy and paste code" learning process.

you need to know one thing when you get to chap 9
mx.utils.delegate. Just do a search on macromedia’s web site of
"What is the significance of Elipsis" Mike Chambers of Macromedia explains it very clearly in this article, in simple terms. This is not hard. They just came up with something similar to the Observer class of Java. It is easy to make the changes when working through the examples, just takes a second.

1) The author really makes it easy with the examples. She provides examples at every stage, you don’t have to code everything. That increases the pace of getting through the book as you can gloss over things you are pretty familiar with and still run the examples easily.
2) She clearly has taught in her life, is a professional teacher in some sense. Has strong communication skills.
3) She covers the essentials clearly.

I consider this a pretty good book for programmers who want to make the transition from a Javascript like mode of programming to a more structured Java-like one using Actionscript 2.0, and to use the built in Framework provided by MX 2004. I am not saying this book is fabulous, but I am not aware of a better book covering the same material.

This book should come with a warning
This book is for Actionscript 1.0!!!! Let me say that again, THIS BOOK IS FOR ACTIONSCRIPT 1.0!!!! Do not buy this if you have the letest version of Flash MX 2004 with actionscript 2.0. Up until the 9th chapter or so it woks alright. After that it all falls apart. The excersises become almost impossible because of the difference between the two versions. I bought this book based on the reviews writen on this site. None mentioned this fact so I am writing this so that anyone else who looks at this book is aware right away. Wait for an updated book. This really should be pulled or a warning should be put somewhere that this is not for the latest version. I hope that I can save someone else some money buy letting them know eactly what is in this book. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!!!!!! (Unless you are still using actionscript 1.0, in which case disregard everything I have said here today)

Flash MX Professional 2004 Application Development
I am writing this in mid-October 2004 after just having finished the book. I honestly wonder if the guy that posted a review in early Oct. actually tried to work through it.

Do NOT buy this book! Wait for the next edition. (Or buy a used copy keeping what I am about to tell you in mind.) It is outdated even though it just came out in April 2004. In July of 2004, Flash Professional MX 2004 was updated to version 7.2 which was actually a minor free (patch) upgrade. However, it had significant changes for those using Flash Professional for Rich Internet Applications (AKA Flash screen based development). Most other Flash books are not affected, as this is really the only book that is advanced enough to go into screens based development and Flash Remoting in Flash MX Professional 2004 in detail.

The book itself is actually very good as far as tech how-to books go. However, starting in Chapter 9 (the book has 16 chapters overall) it totally starts to fall apart. The way that you capture events thrown to the page in an external actionscript class file has changed. All of the code presented in the book on how to do this will no longer work. This obviously includes all of the included example files. It no longer works because the upgrade added a new class for dealing with this. It is not obvious. It took me quite awhile to track down the fix (which actually ends up just being a class import and then rewriting your event listeners so they use this imported class). You then have to recognize where this is done throughout the rest of the book and recode accordingly. The Macromedia forums were no help either as of this writing (saw lots of postings saying gee this doesn’t work, but no solution). Finally figured out it had something to do with the upgrade, as someone said it stopped working after that. If you do buy this book, then go read what changes took place with the 7.2 upgrade in the Flash Dev Center on Macromedia’s site. You will be able to figure out how to fix it.

Also, Chapter 14 is all about using Flash Remoting. When the book was written Flash Remoting was not yet updated to use AS 2.0, and as such you couldn’t reference AS files externally by import statements (which is the main point of this book). Instead, you are given the directions for using include files on the main timeline. The author admits in the book that this will probably change soon to use AS 2.0. It did, and in a big way. The two main classes you are taught to use have also been ’depreciated’ and replaced by something else. So, not only do you have to figure out how to convert it to work (which isn’t a big deal) but also you have to rewrite it using new classes (which are detailed well in the updated Help files -thank you Macromedia).

Don’t get me wrong, I learned a ton from this book. However, I am also already a certified .NET developer comfortable with coding and finding answers in Help files, online, etc. I just want anyone who buys this book to know what they are getting into. The ’errata’ page for the book still states ’none found so far’ which is ridiculous and there doesn’t seem to be much forum help either. (Lots of activity for the other less advanced non-screens based, non-pro, Flash MX 2004 book though.)

My advice is to buy this used, keeping in mind what I said, or wait for the next edition. Or better yet, save the $ and learn from the tutorials online on Macromedia’s site. That really isn’t an option for a beginner, but if you have coding experience it might be less painful (and is more up to date) than this book.

Great Flash Book for Learning and Using OOP principals
When it comes to flash books on the market I always see them segmented into different things: Animation, Games, ActionScript, or Design related. There are a limited amount of books available for someone looking at flash for pure application development.

This book is great if you come from a middleware programming background (as I did) with languages such as ColdFusion, ASP, or PHP. Flash MX 2004 Professional gives you a wonderful palate of components to make your application development much easier, but with that power comes the responsibility of learning ActionScript 2.0 (a strongly typed Object Oriented Programming Language). For many people without the benefit of any kind of OOP background, this book will be crucial to teach you the principals and apply them to your application.

If you already have OOP background, there is nothing stopping you from starting anywhere you wish in the book, the contents on the DVD that accompanies the book contains solutions to each section so all you have to do is pick up one section back from where you want to start, and move forward. Those that complain about constantly saving the files or moving them, it’s because you are going from start to end of the book and debugging your application might be tricky so it’s helpful to have the solutions there at each section so you can compare where you may have gone wrong.

Jeanette Stallons is a talented trainer / author and she does a great job in this book of getting the principals out there with easy to use examples and lots and lots of great information. This is a huge book and an excellent learning guide.

Poorly Written
My disappointment with this book is it lacks natural flow. I found myself drifting out of thought because the book has you shuffling files around every other page. I also share the discouraging fact that you must work through six chapters (half the book) before you are really engaged in "Application Development".
There seems to be a rash of poorly written books emerging under the heading of Flash MX 2004 - 2004 Pro and the best way to gage the relevancy of a new book before you buy it is to see how well the resale price is holding up in the used book market. If the price has dropped significantly after the release, you probable should buy something else or buy it used so you do not end up kicking yourself later. This one is already half of its list price; could it be that only half of it is worth paying for?