Location: Home» Steamers & Rice Cookers » Software Development » Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers (Foundation)

Resources

•	Appliance Blog
•	Buying Guides
•	Appliance Manuals
•	Link To Us
•	Shopping Cart
•	Checkout

Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers (Foundation)

enlarge

Authors: Tom Green, David Stiller
Publisher: friends of ED

List Price: ~~$39.99~~
Buy New: $26.39
You Save: $13.60 (34%)

Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

37 reviews

Media: Paperback
Pages: 600
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 7.4 x 1.3

ISBN: 159059861X
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.78
EAN: 9781590598610
ASIN: 159059861X

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

What youll learn

The ins and outs of the Flash CS3 interface
How to use all of Flash CS3's essential features, such as text, graphics, and animation
How to use video and sound effectively in Flash
The basics of ActionScript 3.0
Building Flash user interfaces rapidly using components.
How to populate a Flash movie with dynamic data such as XML.
The Basics of creating Flash Lite applications (Flash for mobile devices)
Using Cascading Style Sheets with Flash
Optimizing and publishing your Flash movies

Who is this book for?

This book is for both beginners who want a solid grounding in Flash CS3, and designers with previous Flash experience, who want to get up to speed with the new features.

Summary of Contents

Chapter 1: Learning the Flash CS3 Professional
Chapter 2: Graphics in Flash CS3
Chapter 3: Symbols and Libraries
Chapter 4: ActionScript Basics
Chapter 5: Audio in Flash CS3
Chapter 6 Text in Flash CS3
Chapter 7: Animation in Flash CS3
Chapter 8: Video in Flash
Chapter 9: Using the Flash UI Components to Build Interfaces
Chapter 10: CSS and Flash
Chapter 11: Dynamic Data (XML) and Flash
Chapter 12: Going Mobile in Flash
Chapter 13: Optimizing Flash Movies
Chapter 14: Publishing Flash Movies

Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...

1 out of 5 stars

They know Flash, but not English September 25, 2008
John Brannen (Versailles, KY)
1 out of 5 found this review helpful

These guys obviously have a lot of technical knowledge, but when it comes to actual explanation of the concepts, they fail. Hierarchically speaking, their instruction is gibberish. They jump from vocabulary to examples to anecdotes without giving an overall coherent paradigm for understanding of most major concepts.

In other words, their instruction is valid when taken piecemeal, but does not equip the user to understand or implement correct systems of thinking for the program as a whole.

Furthermore, the speed of instruction and depth of explanation varies wildly from chapter to chapter.

1 out of 5 stars

Hidden sample lesson files makes it difficult to learn September 14, 2008
Monbert Robica (NYC, USA)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful

Addendum: 2 people commented that there are sample files and included two different urls. I am downloading as I write this and will try them out. Still feel like I wasted time & energy to get to this point. The logic of not including the url in the book eludes me. I actually went to the publishers site and sent an email to "feedback", but it came back as undeliverable. So their web site links don't work. Makes me wonder about other possible errors, omissions or frustrations in the lessons.

This book might actually be helpful if it included the sample files. I've just spent 45 minutes, reading and rereading the intro, chapter beginnings, etc., hoping that the samples files could be downloaded someplace. Nothing.

It should mention/warn before you buy the book, that the samples are not available. No mention of online download, nor does the book include a disc. Just have to imagine what it's like to do the lessons.

Luckily, I've used Flash MX 2004 and can kind of understand the lessons, but it's a bit dizzying without actual files to work on. This is a very frustrating experience especially for a pricey book.

5 out of 5 stars

Very Well Done August 29, 2008
Paul Bennett (Seattle, WA United States)
I shake my head when I think about the amount of planning that has to go into a book of this caliber. They couldn't have done a better job keeping track of the ideas introduced in early chapters and building on them in succeeding chapters until they are well ingrained.

The tone is good -- occasional bits of levity but not so much that it becomes grating.

I came to this book with some familiarity with Photoshop and Illustrator, but none whatsoever with Flash. I'm nearly done with the book and am ready to take on the Flash projects I have in mind. I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning Flash.

1 out of 5 stars

Very Inconsistent August 25, 2008
peacemaker
Having read all the positive reviews, I had a lot of expectations for this book, however, I was bitterly disappointed. I'm only on page 26 of the book and I've already become frustrated with missing steps in the instructions, inconsistent content in the digital files, not to mention, the book didn't even tell us where to download the files and I had to find them myself. Maybe PC users aren't experiencing the same troubles I'm having, as the book seems to be based entirely on the PC version with some Mac shortcuts mentioned as afterthoughts, seemingly for marketing purposes; however, some inconsistencies are doubtlessly cross-platform.

On the Mac, menu items seem to be named differently, functions don't seem to behave the same way, as least not according to the instructions in the book. But more frustrating is that the contents of the example files do not correspond to the ones mentioned in the book, as vague as the descriptions are in the book to begin with - eg. the book gives an example of 2 items on the stage, when we open the file, there are 3. Insert Layer is somehow misnamed as New Layer,it's not a big deal, we can figure it out, but is this kind of error forgivable in an instruction book we PAY extra for? When we add a new Layer "2" to the file, according to the book, it becomes Layer 5 in the software; let's not forget to mention that the book's "Layer 1" layer is somehow named "Box" in the actual digital file, what is going on here?? Now, this is not a platform issue, the digital files and the book simply do not match. The remaining instructions from the book on that exercise obviously cannot be followed as so many things are completely different, and this is only Chapter 1.

I can forgive books on general theories and analysis being vague and inconsistent, but this is suppose to be a step-by-step software instruction book, is it so hard for the digital files to correspond to what is printed in the book? Can't the authors at least take a few minutes to double-check the differences between the Mac and PC versions before claiming that this book works for both?

I'm going to try to guess through the inconsistent and frustrating examples in order to learn the software, assuming things do not get worse after Chapter 1, but I do resent having to make extra effort for all this guesswork from an instruction book. Time might be better spent learning Flash off the web.

EDIT.
Despite some inconsistencies, having read a bit further, the book does offer a lot of helpful information, and a lot of effort put forth by the authors to make learning Flash as painless as possible. If the reader has the patience and determination to persevere through some of the inevitable errors in such a large volume, the book does give a decent overview of Flash. In retrospect, I would give the book a 3.5 stars rather than 1. 8/28/2008

1 out of 5 stars

Not recommended August 1, 2008
David Hirschi (Marfa, TX)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

As a true Flash newbie, I can't recommend this book. I found the sample lessons to be too much too soon and, in some cases, steps were left out. There wasn't enough time spent at the beginning on learning your way around the timeline and information about optimizing and publishing your move are like an afterthought at the end of the book. The book also bills itself as 'for designers' and yet the samples used to demonstrate Flash principles are poorly designed.