Rating: 
Summary: Great samples and inspiration
Review: Code samples and tutorials from different Flash artists, including individual influences and perspectives. Some of the artists are way out there. The code is consistently understandable if you really spend the time with the tutorials, and you have a basic ActionScript knowledge. This book is cool.
Rating: 
Summary: Same ol stuff
Review: I bought this book because I liked the last version and this one was going to deal with Flash 5. It's a real pretty book and the CD is real nice, but the content is boring. It seems like every chapter dealt with creating horrible 3D effects with Flash's primative x,y,z axis commands in actionscript.Only Gabriel's chapter really pulls off a neat 3D trick, everybody else is just making cheesy wire frame navigations. I noticed another technique, which is covered twice in the book, is getting the date and time to display in flash, VERY exciting stuff here. Granted, if you like this sort of stuff the book covers it really well. If you're looking for diverse techniques from a variety of artists, you are going to be disappointed. Skim it in a bookstore and just set it down...
Rating:
Summary: What a great book!
Review: I just got this book in NY and it's very inspiring, and educational. I followed one of the tutorials, and the effect worked great, I learned so much!! This is not a reference book for ActionScripting, fyi. It's more getting into the minds of these artists, and seeing how they do things and how they see world. It's all in Flash 5, and comes with files on CD so you can compare your work to the finished movie. Very tight book.
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Summary: this book changed my life
Review: I read this book with an open mind thinking that I knew everything about flash!how wrong was I? The insight that many of the contributors possess has beggered belief. Once I put the book down I picked it straight back up and started reading again(no joke) Using the tools shown to me I am now on my way to creating even more dynamic web sites! thank you all especially the mind master that is limond
Rating:
Summary: Not Much Here...
Review: If your goal is to learn anything about Flash, buy something else. This book is a pretentious vehicle written by and for people in the industry who take themselves far too seriously. It's a "coffee table" book of Flash sites and designers essays, and as if that wasn't absurd enough, it's peppered with ostentatious quotes like the following from Flash designer Yugo Nakamura: "What I was trying to capture was the reflection, the impression of the real human being conveyed through the way time flowed between the keystrokes." Also included are poorly explained Actionscript references and a CD that offers little value to aspiring developers.
Rating:
Summary: Not Much Here...
Review: If your goal is to learn anything about Flash, buy something else. This book is a pretentious vehicle written by and for people in the industry who take themselves far too seriously. It's a "coffee table" book of Flash sites and designers essays, and as if that wasn't absurd enough, it's peppered with ostentatious quotes like the following from Flash designer Yugo Nakamura: "What I was trying to capture was the reflection, the impression of the real human being conveyed through the way time flowed between the keystrokes." Also included are poorly explained Actionscript references and a CD that offers little value to aspiring developers.
Rating:
Summary: Genius
Review: Is it wrong to use the word 'genius' when talking about web designers? I would have said no before reading this work, but now I'm not so sure! A fantastic reference work which is surely a 'must-buy' for any aspiring web designers out there...
Rating:
Summary: Great samples and inspiration
Review: Plain and simple this book is about the code! Some of the authors have interesting perspectives (Brain Limond) but when it really comes down to it, who cares! The real value of this book is knee deep in the minds of the people who wrote the actionscript for the tutorials.
Pick it apart, and get in to the head of each of these authors and there you will find the price of the book worth every penny you may have had to pinch to purchase this very expensive book. The coding style that Erik Natzke talks about and demonstrates in this book is priceless. So bottom line if your a actionscript junky and you got the IQ to dive into someone else's mind I just don't see how you could not love this book!
Rating:
Summary: The secret is in the code!
Review: Plain and simple this book is about the code! Some of the authors have interesting perspectives (Brain Limond) but when it really comes down to it, who cares! The real value of this book is knee deep in the minds of the people who wrote the actionscript for the tutorials.
Pick it apart, and get in to the head of each of these authors and there you will find the price of the book worth every penny you may have had to pinch to purchase this very expensive book. The coding style that Erik Natzke talks about and demonstrates in this book is priceless. So bottom line if your a actionscript junky and you got the IQ to dive into someone else's mind I just don't see how you could not love this book!
Rating:
Summary: A must-have for your collection
Review: The tutorials worked through in this book are really up close and detailed, and absolutely nothing is skipped: each chapter begins with instructions on what size to create your canvas, and finishes by telling you to export your final .swf file. In between you have not only detailed descriptions, but also loads of screenshots, and every line of ActionScript code file typed out. The book also comes with an accompanying CD containing not just every .fla used in the book, but also video interviews with some of the designers, and if the static printed screenshots in the book aren't enough for you, then just sit back and watch the amazing animated walkthroughs on how to build your movie in the application itself. So if you don't feel like lugging the massive 500+ page book around with you when you go somewhere, just pop the CD into your pocket and you've got everything you need. The book continues in the fine tradition of its predecessor, but now, in response to user demands apparently, there is a brand new element to be found at the end of each chapter: Headnotes. This is a small section in which we are told how to expand the example we have just worked through, or how we can alter it slightly to get a totally different result. So if for example, the tutorial walks you through an effect that makes use of the cursor's X position to control a horizontal slide of some sort, the headnotes might suggest making use of both the X AND Y properties of the cursor to create an object that seems to rotate in 3D. It's things like this that mean the book is not just a set of 15 set, un-changeable effects that you can't do much with, without looking like you're ripping off the creator, which some people may mistakenly believe when merely skimming through the book. The headnotes invite your mind to look at the examples not as one complete contained effect, but rather one end result that was achieved by using a whole range of possible techniques within Flash, and that it is these individual techniques that your mind should be looking to and combining when wanting to create any other effects of your own. Although this book is aimed at people who are "at the summit" and is written by some of the leading Flash designers in the world, it is a book that absolutely every Flash user (and a whole bunch of non-Flash users) of every skill level will enjoy immensely. The whole book is written in easy-to-understand terms, without ever once being patronising. This is not only an excellent book on how to learn to work with a fairly advanced level of Flash, but it is also an excellent standalone design book.
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