Bonnie Blake, MFA, (Oakland, NJ) is an award-winning designer who specializes in graphic design and multimedia, and has been an avid Flash user since its first release.  She is an Assistant Professor of Multimedia Design at Ramapo College of New Jersey.  Bonnie is the author of the first two editions of How To Do Everything with Flash, co-author of the third edition of How To Do Everything With Flash, 50 Fast Digital Video Techniques, Master Visually iPod and iTunes (Wiley), and Flash Deconstruct (NRP), as well as the author of Flash 5 ActionScript, a best selling online course at ehandson.com.

Doug Sahlin (Lakeland, FL) is an author, graphic designer, and Web site designer living in Central Florida. He is the author of twelve books on graphic design including How To Do Everything with Adobe Acrobat 6.0. Sahlin’s articles and product reviews have appeared in national publications such as Computer Graphics World, 3D Magazine, Video Systems, and Corel Magazine. His tutorials have been featured at numerous Web sites devoted to graphic design.

Beginning and intermediate Macromedia Flash users will learn how to create and publish rich, interactive content and applications including motion graphics, movies, sound files, and presentations. Fully updated to cover all the new and existing features of Flash, this easy-to-follow book includes step-by-step exercises to help readers build their knowledge and get an inside look at Flash techniques.

• There are more than one million Macromedia Flash users
• Macromedia Flash is the industry standard for creating fast-loading, interactive Web menus, buttons, title bars, and animations
• Macromedia Flash reaches 97% of Internet-enabled desktops worldwide

Bring new life to your graphics and easily create and publish movies, sound files, presentations, interactive web content, and much more with help from this step-by-step guide. How to Do Everything with Flash 8 shows you how to get the most from this tremendously powerful multimedia design tool through easy-to-follow and well-organized bits of information. Fully updated to cover all the new and existing Flash features--including advanced interactivity with ActionScript--this valuable resource will help you discover why Flash is the world’s most popular web graphics application.

• Follow a fun and easy program that makes learning the basics of Flash a breeze
• Understand each element of the toolbar, timeline, and library
• Create static, input, and dynamic text for applications or games
• Add graphics, video, and sound to your movies
• Embed and edit video in Flash documents
• Understand the range of animation features including motion tween animations
• Use timeline effects to quickly create animations
• Make animated movie clips and buttons
• Use behaviors to create interactive movies--without programming
• Get an introductin to ActionScript
• Test, optimize, and publish your Flash movies

Beginning and intermediate Macromedia Flash users will learn how to create and publish rich, interactive content and applications including motion graphics, movies, sound files, and presentations. Fully updated to cover all the new and existing features of Flash, this easy-to-follow book includes step-by-step exercises to help readers build their knowledge and get an inside look at Flash techniques.

The Book I Reach for First
This book got me going right away creating websites in Flash and it’s the first book I reach for when I’m having trouble or trying something new. It’s an easy read offering enough detail to let you explore a subject without being overly technical.

A useless book
This is not a book that deserves a read. You could find all the materials, presented better, from Macromedia site. It is also not a reference book because a lot of topics are not covered, though it is called "do everything".

Excellent resource for learning Flash MX
You will be amazed at how quickly you’ll be up and running using this book. I had no experience in flash before I picked this book up and now I use it as a dogeared reference and a tutorial. I liked this book because it takes you from absolute novice and shows all of the interface tools and alot of techniques, all in plain english. It reads like a textbook but with no excercises at the end of the chapters. Although actionscripting is introduced and used in about the last 3rd of the book, it doesn’t go heavy into that subject matter, and is honest about it. The bent is definitely more on how to use the tools, importing sound, using text, the timeline, and other graphic concerns. Those are important subjects to master before one dives into actionscript. All of the examples actually work (extremely important). You can download the examples from the website since there’s no cd. There was probably extensive editing, which I appreciate...I can’t find any typos or errors. The only errata I found were some of the keyboard shortcuts didn’t work, but that was a relatively minor hiccup. Overall, I found this to be an excellent resource for learning Flash MX. Kudos to Bonnie Blake!

Short and Concise-Good Book
This book got me animating after the first chapter. I like the way it’s organized. It made it very simple to learn Flash. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has never used this program before. It’s also not boring. Thumbs up