Rating: 
Summary: Start here... first place to get a grip and then refer back.
Review: Buying a stack of Flash 5 books is a reasonable approach to
study the software... "BUT" if your AS time and budget chalanged as most of us trying to keep up with the upgrade additions of the chip makers and then the wonderful software providers: MacroMedia, Adobe, 3DStudio Max to name a couple. "THIS IS THE SINGLE BOOK TO BUY... AND GET IT IN THE NUTSHELL... WITH HANDS ON EXERCISES THAT WORK - 95% OF THE TIME"! THEN... MOVE OUT WITH ACTIONSCRIPTING... IN YOUR SKILL SEEKING.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: DO NOT purchase Macromedia's Flash 5 Training From The Source if you know little about Flash. It's for intermediate to advanced users and it will sit on your shelf until you pick up a book like Flash 5 Hands-on Training. This book explains everything you need to know about Flash 5 with plenty of exercises. It even has short movies to help you better understand what's going on (although the book is so well done, you really don't even need them). I'm barely through 1/3 of the book and my understanding of Flash 5 has increased exponentially! Kudos!
Rating:
Summary: Flash in a Flash
Review: Don't have time to read a drawn out review? Bear with me.Don't have time to sit down and learn one of the most vital applications of web authoring? Sure you do. Lynda.com does it again with an approach to teaching a not-very-easy program in a way that would make anyone less apprehensive, actually makes it fun, without taking up too much of your valuable time. Each of the 17 chapters contains from six to eight abbreviated exercises you can breeze through, come back to any time you want without disrupting the flow, and best of all, you can start ANYWHERE in the book you want without worrying that you may have missed something in previous chapters. That's right .... you can cheat!!! This is the way school always should have been. As with their easy and enjoyable book on Dreamweaver 4 (and also featuring that book's instructor Garo Green), your friendly tutor Kymberlee Weil presents a simple and speedy curriculum that one can dash through, yet be left with a sense of comprehending the method of this very involved and, to many, somewhat intimidating web tool. The wrong book on Flash could actually be very discouraging to learning, but fortunately, this is not that book. Flash 5 H.O.T. will get you started ..... THEN you can go nuts and get all those lengthy tomes on ActionScript and Animation FX, and you may have noticed there are a lot of them. But THIS is the one to start with. Now if only they would come out with a Director 8.5 book. ..... Read a good school lately?
Rating: 
Summary: Good book
Review: I attempted to learn Flash 5 first with a dummies book and then a sam's book. Neither compared to this one. The whole hands-on-training series offers just that, a hands-on approach to development. The included tutorial movies were especially useful and were the individual exercises the author had us follow along with. It doesn't cover many advanced topics, like action scripting, but for a beginner just wanting to learn flash, this is a good read.
Rating:
Summary: Lyndo.com is tops - bought book
Review: I can't say enough about how Lynda and assoc. writes books. I've bought too many books, such as Flash Magic books, Visual Quick start Foundation Flash & others. Really, I bought too many that sit unused becuase they were not inspiring to me!<<<< I know that I am coming from a beginner to intermediate user, but I have a mad passion for REAL well written tutorial books with quicktime movies. Lynda's books deliver BIG TIME! She take GREAT care, step by step, trying to show you how to do her tutorials with out loosing a step. The other books such as Visual Quickstart books and Flash Magic books really seemed to be geared for more of advanced geek type user. All of them and I've read and browsed many, do not teach as complete as she does. I just feel that there are not very many books out there that teach software the way Lynda's books do. There is something very uplifting about her books. i almost feel like I could go door to door trying to sell her books they are that good. Sure there will be geeky people that feel her approach is to simplistic. But they miss the BOAT BIG TIME!!!!!!!!! O by the way I bought Foundation Flash as well. Again, all the other books that are not written by her from other companies just don't have the gift that she does! That real step by step approach. We all go through life trying to find things that are uplifting, artistic. We see Van Gough paintings, we great bridges built. We see and hear great music. We also see and read great books.
She can teach, and teach very well indeed.
* * * * *
Rating:
Summary: It gives you a solid foundation
Review: I give 5 stars to this great book and I'll tell you why. At first I was little impressed by the size of this book, but when I started to read it I discovered that it was so fast and easy to read. This book is intended for begginers and intermediate Flash users. I have 5 Flash books, 3 intended for beginners and 2 for intermediate, and this one has really made me feel that Flash is under my control. It has given me tips you won't find in the Flash help. It has 17 chapters. I have read one chapter every day. In less than 3 weeks you will learn what every Flash user, beginner, intermediate or expert should know. The knowledge you'll gain with this easy reading book (but full of information, excercises and samples) will help you all the way until you become a Flash master. Wanna save time and money? Buy Flash HOT Book. These guys really know how to teach. They don't try to impress you with dark concepts you can't understand. They haven't forgotten they were newbies some day. They know the art of teaching. I really recommend this book to beginners. Soon you will have the knowledge and tools to unleash your creativity and start creating movies and web sites.
Then you can buy whatever intermediate or advanced book you want. You'll be ready for the next level stuff.
Rating:
Summary: I LOVE the Hands-On Training Series
Review: I got the Dreamweaver Hands-On Training after reading the reviews on this site and loved it enough to try the Flash Hands-On book. I love both books! I've looked at other books but none have the cd like these HOT books do. I can't tell you how helpful it is to have files you can actually use and play around with! I'm not a developer/designer, I'm actually a tax analyst. So I'm not the brightest when it comes to technology, and I think if these books can help me learn quickly I'm sure others will have no problem! I also did not find any errors with the instructions, I've used other books like the "Learn in 24 hours" which can have typos or the instructions were not updated with the new version of the software. Garo and Lynda are awesome! They know how to teach software in a manner that is easy to absorb and also teach the kind of stuff that you actually want to use. I'm hoping they will come out with one for the rest of the MX series like Fireworks.
Rating:
Summary: I LOVE the Hands-On Training Series
Review: I got the Dreamweaver Hands-On Training after reading the reviews on this site and loved it enough to try the Flash Hands-On book. I love both books! I've looked at other books but none have the cd like these HOT books do. I can't tell you how helpful it is to have files you can actually use and play around with! I'm not a developer/designer, I'm actually a tax analyst. So I'm not the brightest when it comes to technology, and I think if these books can help me learn quickly I'm sure others will have no problem! I also did not find any errors with the instructions, I've used other books like the "Learn in 24 hours" which can have typos or the instructions were not updated with the new version of the software. Garo and Lynda are awesome! They know how to teach software in a manner that is easy to absorb and also teach the kind of stuff that you actually want to use. I'm hoping they will come out with one for the rest of the MX series like Fireworks.
Rating:
Summary: finally! i can USE this program!
Review: i have been dabbling with flash for awhile now. i do HTML sites and a lot of print work, but i've been dying to become more comfortable with flash. i hardly have time to take a night class, so i tried this line of books. Hands-On-Training books are the way to go! you go at your own pace and it is in a class-like layout, one step at a time. the CD-ROM contains everything you need and the Quicktime movies serve to explain the tricky things in detail while showing you exactly what is going on! the tone of their teaching is fun and understandable and never goes over your head. i am so thrilled, i now feel like i can actually USE this program! i have also previously bought the dreamweaver H.O.T. book, and it too was fantastic. these books are not meant to be reference books, they are teaching books. i recommend buying a reference book later (the Visual Quick Start line is great for the price). also, it is nice to get a book that uses Mac as its teaching tool, though it is easily translatable into Windows. what a bang for the buck! and to think i wanted to take a course for $450!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent flash 5 book for beginners!
Review: I just finished this book and I thought that it was excellent.
You can read one thousand books about flash, but you will not appreciate it's power until you start to do exercises with it. The author realized this and made this entire book exercised based. I knew nothing about flash in the beginning and now I am ready to move on to game making in flash. Wonderful book! Highly recommended!!
Mark
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