Rating: 
Summary: fun, clear, concise, with some goofy comedy relief!
Review: I just completed the virtual classroom CD accompanying Doug Sahlin's Flash 5 book. I must say that it was an enjoyable way to spend a few hours. I teach graphics glasses and am always interested in seeing other teaching methodologies for classroom, distance, and self-paced learning environments.This book could be used in any of those arenas. The author displays a thorough knowledge of the subject in a clear and concise fashion both in the video and the book chapters. The book is laid out in a clean and organized style and although I would recommend this book for beginner/beginners, I added a few new tips to my collection. I enjoyed the video presentations, although I had some sputtering of sound and sound/lip sync problems with the real player. Tonight I viewed the video again from another computer wondering if the voice over might accomplish the same thing without the video of the instructor as it's really the content in the main window that is important and well presented. However, you can see that the author is a clown and having a good time creating this project for us, and the element of a real teacher can ad that touch of humanity missing in our on-line virtual existance! I value the ability to have my program of flash running simultaneously with the video so I could pause the video and do the lessons. I have used flash to produce a few company demos and consinder myself an intermediate user. I get stuck on the actionscripting and this book touches on actionscripting enough so one could advance to a book like Foundation Actionscripting with a basic understanding of this robust flash feature. I recommend this book to flash beginners and anyone who hasn't launched their flash program in a while and wants a good clean organized review.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book for Beginners or More Advanced Users
Review: I think Sahlin has done a great job with this book. It is basic and easy to understand for beginners while not being too simplistic for more experienced users. I thought the book was very well written and the videos were very helpful.
Rating:
Summary: Great book & video
Review: I thought the book was very informative especially since I've never used Flash 5 and the video is a plus. Felt like I had my own personal instructor!
Rating: 
Summary: a bit simplistic
Review: I thought this book and accompanying CD were a bit simplistic. Mr. Sahlin should do away with the "props" he uses as examples on the video - I felt this was "dumming down" just a bit too much. And, Mr. Sahlin may know Flash, but in this day and age, he should consider hiring professional "talent" for the video. At times, I found his pronouncition of words a bit hard to understand. The content of the book and CD was ok and followed logical teaching patterns, however, given this method of teaching Flash, just the minimum basics could be presented. There is just so much more to Flash. Also, the CD ran fine on my PC but after installing to the letter on my Mac - had some big time problems.
Rating: 
Summary: this book is horrible
Review: Oh god this book is really horrible
after reading the whole book you will find your self able to make simple and silly motion and nothing more
the worst thing in this book is that you should watch the author speaking to you in a very silly way
you can't get any ready examples of this book you will find it wanting you to do everything , the whole series of steps and , if you have some trouble in one of the steps you cannot do the whole example
flash is a simple program but the worst thing about it for a beginner that when he faces little problems he wont be able to solve it because he can not find out what is the problem !! and this book don't teach you how to find out what is the problem and instead of this , this stupid book will make suffer more of these things especially when doing some long examples in this book
I am sure that this book don't worth a single penny
Rating:
Summary: this book is horrible
Review: Oh god this book is really horrible
after reading the whole book you will find your self able to make simple and silly motion and nothing more
the worst thing in this book is that you should watch the author speaking to you in a very silly way
you can't get any ready examples of this book you will find it wanting you to do everything , the whole series of steps and , if you have some trouble in one of the steps you cannot do the whole example
flash is a simple program but the worst thing about it for a beginner that when he faces little problems he wont be able to solve it because he can not find out what is the problem !! and this book don't teach you how to find out what is the problem and instead of this , this stupid book will make suffer more of these things especially when doing some long examples in this book
I am sure that this book don't worth a single penny
Rating: 
Summary: The real review
Review: Okay, as far as flash books goes this is just like all the rest. Giving you your basic info on Flash 5. No big deal. Whats totally missing with this book is the companion CD has some lessons, but there more like very quick explanations of how to create certain elements in flash. The explanations are to quick to follow and at the same time the CD comes with know .fla files for you to follow along in flash while you view the movies. This would have been great to see as an addition is the actuall files so that you could try out what the heck this guy is talking about. Another thing I have problems with is this guy just does not impress me with his teaching act. He's just to goofy. For some reason I just could not wrap myself around his personality.. Get someone who has a presence. Someone you can say this guys for real... Hire an actor or something... Id have to say this is just another quick release book and the virtual classroom aspect is not up to par.... If you can get the book for ... its worth it I guess for a first time book, but if youve already bought a few flash books and your looking for something with some guts and very finely tuned tutorials to follow along and really get what there saying, this is not the book..... Bubba
Rating:
Summary: A Good Idea but.....
Review: The concept of this book is excellent. However, the videos were as though they were made for someone who already knows Flash. The videos are at a fast pace and very little explanation is given how to perform the commands. The book is equally hard to follow and does not give any clear examples. Bottom line is, I like the idea, but would not recommend this book to anyone who is just starting out with Flash.
Rating:
Summary: Worthless
Review: This book is short, remedial, and useless. I found one intermediate level tutorial (scrolling text boxes). Even for a beginer book, there just isn't enough information. Visual Quickstart Flash 5 is much better, and better still is the entire Friends of Ed series, starting with Foundation Flash. The only thing worse then this book are the jokes told by the "professor" in the virtual classroom.
Rating:
Summary: Worthless
Review: This book is short, remedial, and useless. I found one intermediate level tutorial (scrolling text boxes). Even for a beginer book, there just isn't enough information. Visual Quickstart Flash 5 is much better, and better still is the entire Friends of Ed series, starting with Foundation Flash. The only thing worse then this book are the jokes told by the "professor" in the virtual classroom.
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