Macromedia Flash MX: A Beginner's Guide

The book covers the basic concepts behind Flash--learning the work environment; drawing; creating animations; using motion guides, masks, symbols, imported graphics, and sound; publishing movies; and using ActionScript. If you’ve been resistant to learning the latter up until now, this book may be just the one that gets you started programming your movies with interactivity.

The book moves you along by keeping you thinking, doing, and recapping what you’ve just learned. There are lots of mini-projects for hands-on learning. In fact, by page 22, you’ve gotten your feet wet with a simple animation. Each of the book’s 14 chapters begins with a set of goals and ends with a "Mastery Check" with which you can test your comprehension. And there are pop quizzes on almost every page. Although they may seem elementary, these tests help you learn with confidence and know when it’s safe to skip ahead.

"Ask the Expert" sidebars seem to anticipate readers’ questions. For example, "I opened the Insert menu, and I see there is also a Blank Keyframe command. Why would I choose this command rather than the Keyframe command?" The strict answer would be "When you want to insert a frame that doesn’t copy the contents of the previous keyframe." But Underdahl’s answer goes one step further and lets you know that, most likely, you won’t want to choose a blank keyframe because you’ll probably want to manipulate the previous keyframe’s contents in order to animate them.

In other words, this beginner’s guide doesn’t just define features and tools; it lets you know why you might need them and how they may be useful to you. A good teacher shows what’s possible--and Brian Underdahl is a very good teacher. --Angelynn Grant