Face it: Poorly designed, static Web sites just don’t cut it anymore. The Web (not to mention the technology surrounding it) has been around long enough, and people have grown accustomed enough to dealing with it, that folks want (and expect) a little razzle-dazzle when they go online. For just $12.99, this compact guide shows you how to deliver it! Whether your boss wants you to jazz up the company’s Web site or you’re burning the midnight oil trying to pull together some Web animations for a class project, this tightly focused, project-based guide shows you how to start creating Flash animations in an instant! Using big, bold full-color pictures and streamlined instructions, it covers just the need-to-know essentials that will get you animating with Flash: using the Flash authoring tool, creating and animating graphics, tweening, adding sound, and more.

Face it: Poorly designed, static Web sites just don't cut it anymore. The Web (not to mention the technology surrounding it) has been around long enough, and people have grown accustomed enough to dealing with it, that folks want (and expect) a little razzle-dazzle when they go online. For just $12.99, this compact guide shows you how to deliver it! Whether your boss wants you to jazz up the company's Web site or you're burning the midnight oil trying to pull together some Web animations for a class project, this tightly focused, project-based guide shows you how to start creating Flash animations in an instant! Using big, bold full-color pictures and streamlined instructions, it covers just the need-to-know essentials that will get you animating with Flash: using the Flash authoring tool, creating and animating graphics, tweening, adding sound, and more.

Do not recommend it
All words are written in large, childlike print, to give an impression that this book is easy to read and thus also easy to execute. But the execution instructions are not very well described. Some steps have missing photos. The book is also way too short for the kind of book it is supposed to be: visual introduction to flash for beginners. It also has no troubleshooting. I do not recommend starting learning flash from this book, it is for more advanced learners.

good introduction to Flash
This book is only meant to be a brief introduction to Flash. Not really for the novice. A CD with source code should NOT be included for this price. If you want more than a brief into to Flash, buy a more advanced book. I think you people who give negative reviews are just a bunch of whiners.

Quite Worthless
I got this book under the guise that I would be able to create a website in Flash. I didn’t need a fancy website, only something to house my online portfolio and CV for work-related purposes. This book does not tell you anywhere in the text, but you need at least Flash MX 2004. Flash 5--which I already had--wouldn’t open the source files (not included, but available from the publisher’s website--another flaw; CDs are VERY inexpensive to manufacture and one containing source files SHOULD have been included with the book), and neither would Flash MX. Of course, how are you supposed to know if the author doesn’t tell you? The author completely operated under the assumption that EVERYONE would have the lastest version of Flash installed. This was a BIG mistake, and it renders the book worthless to many people.

Can’t recommend it
I wanted to explore Flash from a site-building perspective, and since I’ve done some animation in the past -- meaning I’m already familiar with concepts like "key frames" and "tweening" -- I figured that this book would be a great way to explore the technology. I’m a great fan of the Visual Quickstart Guide series, and since "Creating a Web Site with Flash" is from a related imprint, it seemed likely that I’d be able to follow closely what they did in the book and then apply those techniques to a project I had in mind.

Fat chance. I’d read some of the earlier reviews and although several of them were negative, I imagined that being reasonably intelligent and technically savvy, I wouldn’t get stuck the way the book’s other readers had. Nor did I: I got stuck in entirely different but equally frustrating ways. Often I’d find myself instructed by the authors to perform a particular action, but have no way of completing it because that menu choice wasn’t available. (Often it would be visible but greyed out, meaning I’d have to do something else first -- but what?)

I will admit I don’t like the user interfaces that Macromedia comes up with (for Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, etc.) but that’s precisely why I wanted a step-by-step guide like this one. I figured all the full-color illustrations would make it fool-proof. Unfortunately, at least least twice in the first few chapters, this fool got to the point where he just couldn’t make Flash do what the authors said it should be doing. I finally stopped about half-way through in frustration, without either the demo website or any understanding of what I did wrong.

The publisher does provide chapter-by-chapter "snapshot" versions of the files you’re supposed to be constructing (on its website), but I don’t consider that a useful substitute for clear instruction. Sure, handholding someone through a complex application like Flash isn’t an easy task, but I’m wondering whether Peachpit Press actually road-tested the book with a true novice, or just had people already familiar with Flash simply spot-check it for any obvious errors.

Good intro to wet your apetite
It got me started on using Flash in less than 3 days. I have a couple of Visual QuickProject books & they had been helpful. Yes, they lack in-depth details but that’s what they are - quick intros...& very good at that. Part of learning a program is to find out yourself thru trial & error anyway. I had to refer to Flash’ built-in help tool to understand some stuff further (like what’s the difference btwn graphic, movie clip & button behaviours in Symbols).

I have not encounter any errors in this book tt obstruct my learning. I like that it uses one single project (just like other books in this series). The project covers a lot - drawing, animation, buttons, effects, navigation etc. You can see how things connect by using a single project. Enough to get you interested to find out what else Flash is capable of.

Not for newbies or anyone without a reference book to look at.
I just finished the book and, while there were some errors and omissions, I was still able to figure out what to do and troubleshoot the errors -- including my own typos. That, I think, added to the learning experience.

Where I find the most fault with the book is in the lack of explanation of exactly what you’re doing. Do this, do that, fine, but give me a better idea of what I’m doing and why so I can learn and carry it over to my own projects. As it stands now I have a working site -- although, I still need to figure out why the sound doesn’t work on my finished project. Just don’t ask me what or why I did what I did in quite a few circumstances.

I’m going to have to go through a reference book to see what some of the things I did were and why they worked.

Kind of a shame as most of what was done is exactly what I wanted to learn to do. The other books I’ve looked at and read weren’t nearly as directed to my needs as this one. Another 30-50 pages with explanations, etc. and this book would have been awesome and all I needed for a while.

Maybe this should have been bundled with the Visual Quickstart Guide to Flash MX 2004 with references in this book to that one. That would have been cool.

Don’t think I’ll buy another Visual QuickProject book.

Inconsistent information...
I was excited to buy this book b/c it looked like a quick and easy guide for creating a web site in Flash. Unfortunately, I had to stop reading around page 49. There were inconsistencies throughout. For example, it instructs you to add 4 layers to the timeline in addition to the background layer...but in the next chapter, those 4 extra layers disappear from the graphics and explanations that follow. It doesn’t tell you what happened to those layers. Very frustrating. So of course, I could not continue b/c the layers are the central and most important part of the project. I thought this book would help me understand Flash better, but it just confused me. I’m very disappointed that I wasted my money. I do not recommend this book.

Great idea; DISMAL execution
I got this book, captivated by the smart idea: a simple, illustrated guide to Flash, introduced through a brief, manageable project guide, with step-by-step instructions, and screen-shot visuals in color. So far so good. I am not a total newbie - am very proficient with Maromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004, and with Fireworks, and quite competent with Adobe CS2, especially Photoshop and Illustrator. So, I thought, getting up to speed with Flash (which I have, but never needed to use) should be a snap.

And it may have been, if it weren’t for the very sloppy execution of the book. First, the step-by-step instructions often MISS steps, e.g., on p. 6 there is a process of defining and adding colors for the project swatch; the instructions tell you to type the hex value for the color, and then click the Options menu, and choose "add swatch"; of course the only thing that will happen, is that you will become frustrated - the instructions "skipped" telling you to first press ENTER after typing in the hex color value, and THEN click on the Options menu. Without this step, you will not be able to add the new color. Of course you need to press ENTER in Fireworks too, so after one failed attempt following the book literally, I figured it out on the second try intuitively, but "true beginners" will be totally stuck. Similarly, on the p. 22 after adding a new layer, the author directs the reader to use the marquee of the selection tool to select a previously drawn line; well, not so quickly - since after adding a new layer, the new, empty layer is selected, you can drag the marquee all you want, and you will select nothing, unless you first switch to the lower layer - again, a step is missing from the instructions. There are many additional inconsistencies - on the p. 25 you are told to create a new folder in the layers panel and "drag all the other objects" there. On the next page the screenshot image still shows the layers panel without the new folder you just suposedly created shown on top of the layers panel. We could go on - the author - for whatever reason, does not use the vertical guides, which results in difficulty getting the right width of drawn objects; he also uses odd / cryptic naming conventions without any explanation; for example, is there really a reason to name a new layer "bkgd objects"? Why not "background objects"? Especially that the actual image is called "background" not "bkgd"? I there some low limit on layer names length? Alas, the list goes on. Some instructions produce results other than expected a times. If you are familiar with other Macromedia products, you may (although not without some degree of frustration) figure it out intuitively in the end; if you are a true "beginner", you will never get past page 10 of this confusing booklet. I am accustomed to Peachpit books being very carefully written (own quite a few), and well edited, so all those mishaps here were quite an (unpleasant) surprise. What a dud!

Great Introduction
I purchased this book to help acquaint myself with the basics of designing and animating a webpage with Flash. The fact that this is a visual guide not only avoids the monotony of a 600 page completely text-based version, but helps clarify at times when the written instructions are somewhat confusing.

I found building the demo site to be a good introductory walkthrough which I was then able to use in building my own pages. If you’re looking for the down-to-earth basics on designing a flash site without having to wade through every single advanced feature of flash, this book is a great, and affordable, place to start.

My one bit of frustration with this book, is that I am using Flash MX on a Mac, and although the information is generally universal between platforms, all of the visual aids and walkthroughs are for the PC version. Although this does not make the book obsolete for Mac users, there are times where the step-by-step explanations tell you to go to a certain menu item or command, and it’s not there on the Mac version because it is either called something else, or exists under a completely different menu.

Overall it’s still a great introductory resource, but Mac users beware that it will require a bit more patience and independent exploration on your part to make everything work.

Great for newbies
Overall this book is great! So why 4 stars? The reason for the 4 star is this:

I wanted to create a website with Flash. That means learning how to incorporate data into a Flash website design. This book shows you how to create the basis of a Flash website design by showing steps to create an animated background, animated buttons/navigational bar, some actionscript and vector drawing. However when you went to insert the data meant for your website sections, the data was already provided in a .fla file and all Mr. Morris did was show you how to finalize certain parts of these sections. I would have preferred to start with the basics (like he did with the basic flash website design/layout) by providing us with .txt files and .jpg images and then proceed to show the reader how to insert the text and mark it up within Flash by creating our own .fla file for the ’data’. Same with how to create the image slideshow (rather than show us how to add the actionscript to a completed slideshow layout). In my opinion, this type of know-how is extremely important in creating a website.

I have a learning disability and due to it, I have to learn things ’visually’. This book has provided me the tools to understand the basics of Flash and has given me the confidence to go on to the next ’Flash’ step. I will be trying this book next: "How to Use Macromedia Flash MX and ActionScript (2nd Edition)" by Denise Tyler since it looks like it goes into more detail on actionscript. I also intend to pick up this book: "Illustrating With Macromedia Flash Mx 2004 (Internet Series)" by Robert Firebaugh.

Gain familiarity with the Flash tools and workspace
When you begin to use new software like Macromedia Flash, you can expect a considerable learning curve. So, you read 50 or 60 pages in that big, thick, "everything you wanted to know about Flash" book, you put the book down, take some aspirin and say "There has to be an easier way". Well, the easier way is a book like this one by David Morris.

This book will not teach you everything about Flash, but it will take you step-by-step through the process of making a web site with Flash. The book has many illustrations, the instructions are easy to follow and when you are done you will be familiar enough with Flash that you can make sense of that big, thick book that you were trying to read. Basically, that is the purpose of this little book. So what does this book help you to do? You will create a small website for an imaginary business, use most of the basic Flash tools and gain familiarity with the Flash workspace.

First you draw a few lines and rectangular shapes filled with colors or gradients. Then you add some graphics and text. This becomes the background for the web pages. Next, you are introduced to what layers and symbols are and why they are so important to working efficiently in Flash. The Timeline is what makes the Flash animations, slide-shows and movies work. You will use this Timeline to control the animated text effects that make up the introduction to the website. Next, you make interactive, rollover effects for the menu buttons and use the Flash programming language called ActionScript to dynamically display web pages. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Flash website without fancy animation, so you make a slide-show to display the product images for the imaginary business. Finally, you make one of those "loading . . ." progress bar animations and the website is complete.

David Morris has been a website and graphic designer for many years. He was product manager for Macromedia Fireworks and Freehand, as well as part of the Fireworks development team.