Rating: 
Summary: RULE the Flash world with this AMAZING RESOURCE!!!
Review: Listen up all you web developers who want to energize web content with vector based animations: This book is the resource for anyone who is serious about Flash and maximizing its amazing potential at a rapid pace. At RAYHAWK.COM we have been using this book to enhance our web productions and the results have been noticable, not only to us, but to our clients (KFC, Taco Bell, BMW, Porsche, Deltamedical.com). This book is worth every dollar. Like all other Visual Quickstart books, it's straightforward and well written. It has the answers you crave with limited verbosity. The book teaches flash by providing the reader with clear steps on how to complete specific tasks. Excellent for beginners and a great reference for intermediates we personally think that all technical books should be written this well. The book is full of useful info and the author is fun and helpful. She assumes we have little prior knowledge with either Flash and by the end of the book, he teaches us how to produce some fantastic animations. RAYHAWK.COM Web Site Design Glendale, California
Rating: 
Summary: too basic even for beginners
Review: Most of what is covered in the book are the basic things that could easily be learned through the tutorials that come with Macromedia Flash program. Even as a beginner, I find that the book is simply a repetition of the program tutorials that come as standard with Flash. It would've been more useful if the book explains more thoroughly how the basic programming scripts are implemented into a Flash movie through the Flash interface. In other words, how can I begin to make my Flash animations useful for the world wide web by ways of linking urls, publishing, etc. etc. The complex interface of Flash makes it tougher to understand how these simpler programming functions get implemented into flash graphics and animations. Yet, the book falls short in helping to clarify this. The visual guides and the text work together hand in hand. Beginners need to refer to both text and visual guides in order to understand what is being explained. I appreciate the graphics accompanying the text in this book. However, without any CD tutorial to accompany the book, more visual guides would be useful to further clarify the text.
Rating: 
Summary: Too plain, need some exercises
Review: Out of all the Visual Quickstart Guides, I have to admit, this book lives up to its "STRAIGHTFORWARD" attribute. It's pretty comprehensive in explaining what's available within FLASH 5(except for ActionScript) and introduces them well. You can either read this book or FOUNDATION FLASH 5, but in my opinion, FOUNDATION FLASH 5 is much better. WHY? B/C the exercises in FOUNDATION FLASH 5 are MUCH better and help you learn better; FLASH 5 VQS merely introduces what's available. FOUNDATION FLASH 5 also has a couple of chapters on introducing ACTIONSCRIPT, so you can make an easy transition to ADVANCED FLASH.
For ADVANCED FLASH, I highly recommend FLASH STUDIO SECRETS, and DRAG,SLIDE,FADE; ACTIONSCRIPT FOR DESIGNERS by New Riders(hey.. these NEW RIDER GUYS ARE PRETTY GOOD). FLASH STUDIO SECRETS will send you off feeling more comfortable about what you can do with FLASH in real life and DRAG,SLIDE,FADE will give you adequate practice to become a FLASH EXPERT.
Rating: 
Summary: good straightforward book
Review: Out of all the Visual Quickstart Guides, I have to admit, this book lives up to its "STRAIGHTFORWARD" attribute. It's pretty comprehensive in explaining what's available within FLASH 5(except for ActionScript) and introduces them well. You can either read this book or FOUNDATION FLASH 5, but in my opinion, FOUNDATION FLASH 5 is much better. WHY? B/C the exercises in FOUNDATION FLASH 5 are MUCH better and help you learn better; FLASH 5 VQS merely introduces what's available. FOUNDATION FLASH 5 also has a couple of chapters on introducing ACTIONSCRIPT, so you can make an easy transition to ADVANCED FLASH.
For ADVANCED FLASH, I highly recommend FLASH STUDIO SECRETS, and DRAG,SLIDE,FADE; ACTIONSCRIPT FOR DESIGNERS by New Riders(hey.. these NEW RIDER GUYS ARE PRETTY GOOD). FLASH STUDIO SECRETS will send you off feeling more comfortable about what you can do with FLASH in real life and DRAG,SLIDE,FADE will give you adequate practice to become a FLASH EXPERT.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book, if you come from Flash 4
Review: This book does exacly what it is set out to do. Visually get you started. It does lack in explaining all the details, but it does not claim to be a book full of explanation, rather I would suggest it as a Quick referal to see what you need to do to make things work in Flash 5. It does not cover the Action script that flash uses in much detail, and I have not seen a Flash book that does. If you have prior knowledge of Flash 4, this book will we good for you, if not, get this and another book that will teach you.
Rating:
Summary: For beginners
Review: This book is for a beginner. I bought this book because I wanted a cheap book to help me learn flash. I have learned very little from this book. It goes through basic thing any normal computer person would just know.
Like using a couple pages on the pencil and the line tool. I mean who doesn't know what a pencil tool or a liine tool does. This is a pretty good book for beginners, but if your intermediate in flash look for something else.
Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Resource Book
Review: This book is great for quick references! When I use Flash and I need to look something up, I always turn to this book, and it has the answer around 99 % of the time! It will not cover the extremely advanced stages of Flash, but it will get you so comfortable with this software, that you will be using it like a professional in a matter of weeks (or even days)! The pages contain information that is brief and to the point, so you won't have to search for hours for the information that you need! The index is very easy to use as well! This is not meant to be a book with chapters and stories! It is more like an easy to use and detailed instruction manual, but with just enough information to serve your needs! You won't have to read ten pages just to find out how to perform one function in Flash (maybe just two pages max, and that is all it takes)! This is the perfect supplement to the already in-depth tutorials that come with the Flash software!
Rating:
Summary: very beginner
Review: This book was created with the beginner in mind. I started out using Flash 4.0, then when 5.0 came out I thought I would buy a book on it. This was the one I bought and it was a waste of money. It shows nothing new between Flash 4 and 5. It doesn't go into actionscript and gives no information on how to put complex movies together. If you want to make a box tween into a star, buy this book. If you want to learn to develop an entire site, find a different one.
Rating:
Summary: The first Flash 5 book
Review: This is a decent book with concise, straight forward explanations of the features of Flash 5. It isn't, however, very comprehensive or detailed. Question? Should I buy this book because it is first or should I wait for other books? . . . I believe the answer to this question depends upon your experience with Flash. If you just bought the program and want to start learning, you will probably be better off with a more comprehensive tutorial book (there were several for version 4 which I'm sure will be out shortly for version 5). The Quickstart Guide does have tutorials but they are very short and don't include source files (no CD--no download site). For the upgrade users. If you are an expert at version 4 there's very little in this book that you won't be able to figure out for yourself. For the intermediate users who have just upgraded this may be an excellent choice as it zooms through the program in record time!
Rating:
Summary: Best software book I've ever read
Review: Ulrich does a great job of explaining the complexities of Flash--she covers the necessities and then some. Easy to read with good examples. A great book for beginners or intermediates.
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