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Rating: 
Summary: consistently useful
Review: As an instructor of Flash, I have used, since version 4, James Mohler's Flash book as a supplement to my course content. For Flash MX 2004, Mohler has kept with his consistent, user-friendly style of writing and accessible way to instruct a somewhat complicated program.
Rating: 
Summary: So glad I got this book
Review: As someone who's pretty new to Flash, I am so happy I picked up James Mohler's book. I have learned more from this book - and I'm only part-way through - than the other books I had for MX, combined. The CD with example files has helped me immensely, and the way the book is written is definitely easy to read and easy to learn from. It seems that every time I have a question about a function or tool, if I just keep reading, the answer is on the next page!
Rating:
Summary: So glad I got this book
Review: As someone who's pretty new to Flash, I am so happy I picked up James Mohler's book. I have learned more from this book - and I'm only part-way through - than the other books I had for MX, combined. The CD with example files has helped me immensely, and the way the book is written is definitely easy to read and easy to learn from. It seems that every time I have a question about a function or tool, if I just keep reading, the answer is on the next page!
Rating:
Summary: Good intro to Flash
Review: Being completely new to Flash and any kind of media development, Mohler's book was a great place to start for me. It provides numerous exercises throughout the book so that the reader can get hands-on experience while learning about Flash. Many of the exercises are quite useful and some of the techniques I was able to use immediately for the project I am working on. Each topic covered: 2D animation, 3D animation, video, sound, ActionScript gives enough of the information to the reader so one can continue exploration on their own. I will say that ActionScript treatment was a little too basic (that may be a software engineer in me speaking), so I bought two additional books about it. Also there are some errata, but think of them as trick questions to test your understanding. :-)
Overall, this book is a great place for a newbie to get started with Flash.
Rating: 
Summary: Decent book: Missing instructions & errors makes it hard
Review: I got this book to learn Flash MX 2004 and while I did find it helpful and informative, I found that missing steps in some exercises forced me to take my mind off learning the techniques involved and left me scratching my head. Some times I could examine the sample files on the CD and figure it out for myself. Other times I just got frustrated and skipped on to the next section -- hoping I'd find another source on how to do whatever it was I skipped should I need it in the future.The author's lack of naming of symbols and letting Flash label them (Symbol 1, Symbol 2...) made it difficult to take the samples apart to figure them out on my own. In one exercise you are told to create two symbols yet the sample file has 25 symbols. Huh? A keyDown events exercise has "mouseDown" trace responses? The instructions say to "Select Press from the list." for a mouse event yet the sample code and references are on "release?" I found the references to the way Director works a bit distracting as I've never used Director. Might be useful to some but why not sidebar it or stick that in an appendix so the rest of us and skip it? Maybe put the 3D chapter there, too, since you really need to use another app to do it I was hoping to find errata material on the publisher's web site to make up for the book's shortcomings as it really does have potential and I have learned from it. Nope. Sigh. This might be a good classroom book with an instructor supplying the missing pieces and an copy editor having gone through the text. As a learn on your own book there's a lot of room for improvement.
Rating:
Summary: Very thorough
Review: This book is jam packed full of great stuff. The illustrations are excellent and a lot of subjects are covered in detail. It goes beyond what you get in some other beginning books. It's well written and the CD has a lot of good stuff.
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