Rating: 
Summary: This book is just great to learn and understand the program.
Review: I am a beginner in FLASH.
It is very important for me to understand not just how program works.... HOW IT THINKS!
This book is just great to learn and understand the program. I read this book "from cover to cover" and didn't find any unusable info.
GREAT, great, great!
I bought "Flash 5 Studio", "Foundation Action Script" and "New Masters of Flash" And definitely will buy the rest of the series.
Fun to read! Very good writing! Highly recommending for beginners!
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Summary: Amazing!!! I like this book.
Review: Im a beginner of flash 5. this book give me a lot of ideas how to use flash 5. By the way, this book didnt spend 100 pages for introducing the icon function, and the author straight to the point i need. :)
i going to buy the Foundation ActionScript too. HIGH RECOMMENDED FOR THE BEGINNER LIKE ME.
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Summary: Excellent book that gets you up to speed quickly with Flash
Review: This is the best flash 5 book I've come across for learning flash from scratch. I've used several other books (sams teach yourself and flash design from concept to creation) that were terrible. Foundation explains everything clearly and concisely, but they don't dumb it down. They cover everything from the basics (drawing in flash, creating symbols) to the more advanced features (action scripting). I've had the book for just over to weeks and I'm creating my own dynamic flash applications already. I'm now getting ready to purchase they foundation actionscript book, also from friendsofed.
Rating: 
Summary: NO! NO!! NO!!!
Review: Here are some possible indications that you have picked the wrong book with which to learn a rather complex program: You find that, on most of the exercises, you're not getting the results they tell you you're supposed to, and you frantically search previous pages to find what you may have missed; On the exercises that work, you have little if any idea how you arrived at the results, but getting there was such an ordeal you just kind of accept it; You haven't retained enough information to try anything with the program on your own; You find yourself wanting to do almost anything, housework, go to the DMV, other than the next exercise in the book; Finally, about halfway through, you pick the thing up, swearing profusely, and hurl it to the floor, frightening the cat and making the neighbors think you missed your meds.I'm not sure whether to place the blame with the author, editor or proofers, but I'll just keep it simple and blame the publisher .... I am definitely no friend of Ed. I purchased this book based on positive recommendations and a reasonable price, was prepared for the fact that each lesson built on information given in previous lessons. Well .... the information obviously was not emphasised enough, or else maybe you need a wirebound handy to take notes in as you read. Whatever the case, Flash is a complex but necessary application to conquer if you are at all serious about web authoring, and for the beginner just getting his toes damp, this book is not the answer. There is always this sense of something missing as you get more deeply into the exercises, but unless you've bookmarked each little step you took to perform a function, you're hard-pressed to find it. The author attempts to lighten up the learning experience with occasional witticisms; that time and energy would have been better spent reemphasising some of Flash's more complex actions. There are no tutorial files included on CD as with most other volumes; you can go to the publishers' site and download some, but these are minimal, and many of the graphics you are expected to provide yourself ..... if you are an Illustrator user, Flash's vector tools are pretty ham handed in comparison, and require a tutorial in themselves, which, incidentally, you'll find little coverage of in this book. Even something that basic would have helped a lot. In summary: Foundation Flash 5 does not provide a sufficient foundation for the beginner, is not conducive to retaining applicable information, and if this title is indicative of other titles by this publisher, I will know better next time than to attempt to purchase any. As an alternative, I'd suggest Lynda Weinman's H.O.T. series .... something that actually makes one WANT to learn. Hey ... at least I got a very clean house out of the deal.
Rating: 
Summary: Not just a Flash in the pan
Review: For the novice, this book will guide you through the basics and give you an idea of what can be achieved with Flash 5. I actually managed to read the whole book without once turning to the program (yeah, I know it's sacrilege). There are some errors (what book doesn't have them) but on the whole it's the perfect book to get you going, especially if you delve deeper with their other books concerning more advanced features, ie. ActionScript. It's thick but not stupid, well-written but a little dry at times. I've got other Flash books, and although I tend to buy PeachPit Press books, I didn't go their way when it came to Flash.
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Summary: Excellent Book for Beginners
Review: I bought this book on the strength of its Amazon reviews and I was not disappointed. The book was excellent in that it started out as if you knew nothing (and that was me!) and worked it's way up until you could work with any element of Flash. I particularly liked the fact that each exercise built upon the previous one and that the style was very hands-on. Through the process of doing increasingly complex exercises, I came to understand how all of the elements fit together, and when to use certain elements and when to use others (e.g. when to use motion tweening vs. shape tweening). The examples given in the book are also easy to customize so that the book doesn't leave you wondering how you can apply all of these techniques to your given situation. One thing that I have to agree with several other reviewers on is the lack of a robust index. This book *is* a good reference book, if you can just remember where to find the information you're looking for. Some have complained that there wasn't a whole lot on ActionScript; but for me, as a novice, there was plenty to sink my teeth into (a bit more than I needed actually). The two chapters on ActionScript covered all the basics, plus a little intermediate action. Again, it should be emphasized that this book is a tutorial for beginners. The book ends with chapters on how to optimize your site for downloading. These chapters are as detailed as the rest of the book and help you understand Flash from the technical aspect, not just as designer, but also as end user. From a usability perspective, I would have to say that the web site you end up with (building from the examples in the book) is a nightmare for users. If you build your site patterned after the examples, you might just find your site featured on webpagesthatsuck.com. (All links should be clearly labelled and should be identifiable as clickable.)
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Summary: Action Script Limited
Review: This book is excellent for beginning Flash users. The examples are well thought out and easy to follow. The book covers many areas of Flash including motion tweening, movement, masking, button-making, how to "talk" between movie clips, and many other things. The only limitations I found in the book is the coverage of ActionScript, which is what drives Flash. But, as the title suggests, the book just covers the 'foundations' of Flash and not much of the icing. The index of the book is terrible; I have a hard time trying to find material again that was covered. (My all-time favorite books have an excellent index, it makes it easy to recover lost knowledge very quickly.) If were not for the two limitations, I would have given the book a rating of 4 1/2 stars, but that isn't an option.
Rating:
Summary: In you want to do Flash you need to read this book
Review: Fine. If there is a person on earth worse for manuals, that is going to be me. For once I found a book technical and friendly at the same time. As normally happens, there are always some black holes in books where the authors start to assume that you know something you never heard of, or it is not explained in the book you are reading. Well, this is not the case. Everything is explained. When I say "everything" I mean it. Absolutely everything is explained as if you never heard about Flash at all. My most sincere thank you to the authors of this book. I was scared about the power of Flash. Now I have my own Flash designs up and running, most of them helped by this book.
Rating:
Summary: Before you start -- look at the Errata!
Review: Wonderful hands-on, get-comfy orientation to the Flash 5 workspace that gives you enough confidence and experience to move on to the really good stuff that Flash 5 can do. **However, if you are a novice you MUST go to the ... ... ... before you even open the book!** Navigate to the section for Foundation Flash 5, and look at the errata. Correct all the (crucial!) mistakes you find there. You won't understand why so much goes wrong in the ongoing case study after Chapter 7 otherwise -- these errors compound themselves pretty quickly. For beginners who are following instructions without understanding the concepts behind them yet, this is incredibly frustrating, and mars an otherwise great introduction to a difficult program.
Rating:
Summary: Foundation Flash
Review: I'd already taken a Flash course but it didn't really cover actionscripting very well. This book would have been a good course book since it teaches and illustrates the basics and goes further into actionscripting. You end up with a very nice, professional looking opening page for a web site by doing the progressive exercise at the end of each chapter. It will also be a good reference book when I am done with it. I found this book easy to understand and follow along. Although there is no CD included with the book you are given a web site where you can download all the necessary files.
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