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Summary: Foundation Flash Five Fabulous!
Review: I wanted to chime in on the Foundation Flash 5 bandwagon! I greatly enjoyed working with this book. It has a sense of humor and is easy to read. It's targeted to those of us who kind of know what we're doing, but need to be guided a bit more closely in order to understand key topics. Packed with plenty of screen shots and "click-by-click" instructions, this book is a great asset to anyone wanting to learn this powerful program. Easy to follow, very well organized, and comes with tons of extra reference materials, including website links and all. There are so many Flash books now available, but if you're torn between two of them and one is Foundation Flash 5, I'd take Foundation!
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Summary: Excellent Tutorial for someone who knows nothing about Flash
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever come across for Flash. Its a great tutorial, and tells you everything you need to know to get up and running, making pretty decent Flash animations, as well as full fledged interfaces. The price is right on, only 30 dollars makes it a very easy book to justify buying. An excellent starter book, one which I recommend to anyone who wants to learn Flash, and if you want to learn more, there are more advanced books in the series.
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Summary: It needs some thought............
Review: For someone starting out along the very long and winding road that is Flash, this is as good a start as anywhere. It's much better for instance than the manual that comes in the box, and for that matter, is much better by far than the Visual Quickstart Guides. Which in my opinion are next to useless and only any good as replacements for the manual if you haven't got one. Not only does Foundation Flash teach you the program itself, you also get a very good insight into the creativity that is so very important during the process of learning Flash. Unfortunately the book is rather elementary, and this tends to make the book very hard going indeed. However, after pages 500 or so the authors make a point of informing you that you're not a beginner but a novice, and to much welcome relief, start to pick up the pace a little. This seems to be the only one of the series that suffers from this problem, as the other books that follow on from this one are nowhere near so tiresome, and a joy to read and learn from. But you do need to start with Foundation Flash if you don't know the program. Don't make the same mistake as I did.
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Summary: the best way
Review: I tried to learn Flash 5 from the manual and some other flash sites on the web, but this taught me so much faster!! I recommend that beginners use this as their starting off point, because it will help you understand more advanced topics. Also, you can follow their entire series of Flash books to become a real master, hehe.
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Summary: Excellent Book to Start learning Flash
Review: This is by far the best book on Flash for people new to the medium. It not only teaches you how to use Flash, but instills some basic design principles. The tutorials are easy to follow and can be easily adapted for your own needs. The whole series of books from Friends of Ed are just great.
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Summary: It needs some thought............
Review: For someone starting out along the very long and twisting road that is Flash, this is as good a start as anywhere. It’s much better for instance than the manual that comes in the box, and for that matter,is much better by far than the Visual Quickstart Guides. Which in my opinion are next to useless and only any good as replacements for the manual if you haven’t got one. Not only does Foundation Flash teach you the programme itself, you also get a very good insight into the creative technical knowledge that is so very important during the process of learning Flash...For anyone with any degree of intelligence, this makes the book very hard going indeed. The authors have seemed to forgotten that anyone starting with Flash must have a bit of intelligence, otherwise you wouldn’t be starting out with Flash in the first place. However, after pages 500 or so the authors make a point of informing you that you’re now not a beginner but a novice, and to much welcome relief start to pick up the pace a little. Hopefully the rest of the series, which continue on from this book, carry on in the same vein. If they do, they should be highly enjoyable and a joy to read and learn from.
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Summary: Best Beginer Book Out There
Review: If you're looking for a tutorial style book to help you learn flash, this is the book for you. From the first chapter, I was hooked. The examples are practical, and they spend a lot of time expaining what you're doing. I felt like it gave me a really solid grasp of Flash, not a lot of fluff. This book seems thorough enough that it's almost like taking a class. You can even goto the friendsofed.com site and join a discussion group about the book! I definately recomend this to anyone wanting a solid "foundation" in FLASH! Tip: Before you begin this book, go to the website and print off the correction sheet, cut out each item and tape them into the book. It will save a lot of headaches later!
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Summary: The best intro Flash 5 book I've seen, but with a few flaws
Review: If you want to learn Flash 5 from scratch this is a great book, depending on what you expect. I have a multitude of Flash 4 & 5 books, and the biggest problem with most of them is that they fall into 2 categories:1) The "Reference" book style; - All the features of the program are explained without much guidance towards how to actually start and finish a project. These books are good once you know the program to refer back to. Examples: "The Flash 5 Bible", "Flash 5 Visual Quickstart", "Flash 5 Creative Web Animation". 2)The "Project" book style; - The book attempts to teach you how the program works by having you start & finish a project or projects. Unfortunately most of these books don't thoroughly explain "why" you are doing what you are doing. Also, you must blindly follow along, hoping that the skills you are learning can apply to your own individual needs. Many times the "project" is something you will never use. Examples: "Flash Web Design, V5 Remix"- Hillman Curtis, "Flash 5 Magic". "Foundation Flash 5" is good because it is a "project" based book, and assumes you know nothing about the program, and teaches you by example, holding your hand throughout a handful of little projects and one big one. The author Sham Bhangal does a very respectable job of explaining "why" you are doing what you are doing. Beware, as some readers have pointed out, as there are quite a few errors and typos marring this otherwise excellent book. Most of them are explained on their website. I had to contact them via email twice and both times they got back to me within a week. Not great, but at least you can contact the authors and they do get back to you. Also, there are two main chapters on ActionScript, and one of them teaches you by having you design a "card game". Personally, I have no desire to design games, so I wish they would have chosen a more "universal" example to illustrate the same or other ActionScript features. ActionScript is vast enough to have included some more "mainstream" uses. I don't feel that my knowledge of ActionScript is at the level that they would have you believe it will be at. But that is what "Foundation ActionScript" is for, which I am reading now. But overall, this is book was well worth the time spent, and I haven't seen a better intro to intermediate Flash 5 book so far. Recommended.
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Summary: Want to learn Macromedia Flash 5?
Review: This book by far is THE BEST book for learning Flash 5. Throw out the Macromedia Flash Users Manual and start with this one. It will take you step by step through Flash with lots of little tutorials so you can really understand what you are doing. A Definite 5 Stars!
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Summary: If you're a Flash beginner, buy this book !
Review: I was new to Flash... and having played with the shipping manual, I discovered what I can do with the program without really understanding WHY. Now, thanks to Foundation Flash 5, I not only understand the fundamental techniques involved in creating a movie, but also the reasons behind the technique. The exciting thing about Flash and Foundation Flash is the more you learn, the more you realize (and fantasize about) what can be done. It looks like an exciting future! Foundation Flash teaches you the basic concepts behind Flash while carefully explaining the reasons behind the concepts - and for me at least, the more I understand why I'm doing something enhances that learning experience. The book is well written and easy going, the tutorials have been carefully thought out and as you progress through the book, you're constantly reinforced with why you're doing this to create that... Aside from a few typos, I think this is one book which really excels at teaching a subject to a beginner in such a way that you go away feeling like you've actually learnt something. My compliments to the authors - Foundation Flash 5 gets my 5 star vote and will be worth every penny to the beginning Flash designer.Foundation Flash 5 is helping me realize my creative potential!)
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