If you are looking for a fast, visual way to learn Macromedia Flash 8 and create your interactive website, Macromedia Flash 8 On Demand is the book you need. Step-by-step instructions with accompanying 4-color visuals mean you'll spend less time reading and more time learning. You'll learn how you can easily integrate and add interactivity with tools, develop content using pre-built components and effectively improve authoring capabilities with custom extensions.

 

The new features icon used throughout the book highlights what's new in Macromedia Flash 8 and a troubleshooting guide is included to help solve your most common problems. Also, the companion software shows you how to perform everyday tasks and helps you gain web authoring experience. Let Macromedia Flash 8 On Demand help you master Macromedia Flash 8.

 

Great Flash Reference book and prep for certification
I am the manager of the Seattle Flash User Group and I have also passed two Flash certification exams, so I know flash well and have used the program for several years. This book is an excellent book. When someone comes to the User Group and they are new to Flash or want to just learn the program I recommend three books, Lynda.com’s Professional Flash 8: Hands On Training, to start learning the program, that will get your started learning the 20% of the program that you will use 80% of the time, the other two books are the Flash Cookbook and this book Flash on Demand.

I have read the book cover to cover; it is highlighted and has several post-it tabs attached to it. It is the first book I grab when I want to do a quick look up. It does a good job explaining and is full of photos.

It is a great reference and study guide for the exam that is why I read it cover to cover. The certification test cover a lot of area and you need a guide to review and study that covers the whole spectrum. One book will not do it, you need a couple and this one is good for that. They give a lot of suggestions on where to study and making mental notes on the test and they are very accurate.

Also I should add I do not know the people or the company that wrote this book. I am giving them a good review because I like this book and if my review helps someone to learn flash better I did my part. It is a great program. When I started to learn flash I bought a lot of bad books, if I can keep someone from being discourage again I done my part for the flash community.

I like this title
This is one of those sleeper books that gives you information on Flash, and in a way that doesn’t talk down to you, and doesn’t skimp on the cool stuff.

Cool title. I really like these On Demand titles.

great title
This is a great book for those who are wanting to get into Flash. Andy really knows how to talk to us who are starting in the appliction, and those who know how to use Flash. it’s a great title for working with Flash.

Not a good book
While I liked how it looked at each element and described each component’s basic functions, I found a lot of its content to be arguable and VERY poorly edited. In fact, it was so poorly edited, I really had a hard time taking any of it as accurate. The best example in my quick perusal was for "Understanding Basic Components" where it goes off on a wild and very badly written tangent about accessibility (very important and should probably have a whole chapter, but definitely not a "component"):

"When you work with Flash components, you can create Flash content that is accessible to users with disabilities using Flash accessibly features. As you design Flash applications, consider how your users will interact with the content[...] For more information on creating assessable compliant documents, open your browser and visit [URL], or for information on Flash, open your browser and visit [URL], go to the Flash Exchange..."

Do not spend 35 dollars on this book. If you can get it for really cheap, or free, then maybe. But don’t take the content as being golden. A lot of it is questionable and a lot of the screenshots are unnecessary. And if you do have this book, get another one to verify its accuracy.

Good reference manual
This is a good reference manual for all the basic functions of Flash 8. It demonstrates clearly what all the menu options, tools, etc., do; where they’re located; and how to work them. As others have noted, it’s aimed at beginners. The first couple chapters will be old news for experienced users, and it covers only the most basic concepts for Action Script. It’s a good overall introduction, although the text suffers from poor editing and occasional typos. These generally don’t affect the content, but they are distracting.

If you’re looking for a hands-on approach to learning Flash, this isn’t it. You can download demonstration files at Perspection’s web site, but they’re always the finished product, so you don’t get much chance to work out the process yourself. The book has a couple of projects in the back, but they’re brief and more like extra features than tutorials. If you want something with a "learn by doing" focus, consider one of Philip Kerman’s Flash books.

An Interesting Presentation Format that I Really Liked
When I first wanted to learn Flash, I started with the tutorial that came with the software. While I suppose that this works for a lot of people, it didn’t work for me. Although I tried to do everything exactly as described, the result just didn’t come out the same as the demos.

Next step was this book. It says it’s aimed at the Beginner-Intermediate level. Beginner is me. Then I looked at the format of the book inside. It has an interesting format of two columns on each page. One of these is basically text that describes a problem and talks you through the solution. The rest of the page is what the screen looks like when you do it correctly. This worked for me. I knew what I was trying to do at each step. I saw where to point with the mouse. and generally speaking the result turned out like expected. (OK, so a couple of times I had to do something two or three times.)

This is a splendid way to do a tutorial book that leads you through programming in Flash.

In addition, there are two othe features of the book. First if you already know Flash, and you just want to get up to date on the new stuff in Flash 8, it is clearly marked. Second, the back cover says that this book meets the objectives for the Macromedia Certified Professional Program. These certifications look good on a resume. I’m not ready to take the test yet, but I’m headed that way.

very basic for a book
I don’t know... I was expecting more on AS and this book is like a nice Flash 8 manual... if you have patiente to see Flash 8 documents don’t buy this book...

Awesome book
This is the first time I wrote a review because this book is sooooo great. This is my first time taking a Flash class, but the professor runs through the materials very fast, so I can’t follow it or even take notes in the class. This book has many panel pictures to "show" you how to do a task rather than "tell" you how to do it. It breaks up every task into two facing pages, so you can find a function you need very fast from the index and then jump out of the book again. It also shows page numbers of related information of a single task, so you can get more info on one single task by jumping to the number indicated. This book is my Flash saver for the class.

good, but first few chapters are a waste of reading
I just got this book today and so far I’m in the middle of the 4th chapter.. and it’s just getting into the good stuff. Before that it was just navigating around the program (which is really boring stuff that you can figure out by yourself) and how to use a few tools like the brush and pen. But yeah it’s pretty sweet, can’t wait to read more.

Outstanding book!!
This book is a must have for anyone seriously thinking on getting to learn Flash with solid background knowledge on the software and its techniques.

Lots of graphics and examples. Definitely not a boring book, it is fully colored and full of helpful material, really well designed, student friendly and intuitive.

I definitely recommend this book to all Flash users, no matter how experienced you are. If you were looking for a nice Flash book to start with, stop now this is it.

Just OK
I skimmed the first 5 chapters and found nothing new there. I got to the sixth chapter only to find that the example files are just that, "See what we did. Next..." I do not find this a good method for learning. I need to do, not just see what someone else has done.

Great title
I’m not new to Flash; however, it’s not an application that I pick up and use on a daily basis... after digging into this book, I’m going to begin using Flash more and more. Andy’s style of writing is really easy to read, and his tips and tricks for using the application are fantastic. It’s not an advanced book. I’d say it’s for beginners to intermediate users. But some of the chapters deal with some pretty cool features: like incorporating video (flv) into a Flash document, and then using some of the new skin features to personalize the output. If you have ever wanted to use Flash to design everything from Web documents to interactive training CD’s, then this is a great title to own.