Rating: 
Summary: Excellent reading to hit the ground running!!!!
Review: First of all, I am a Certified Web Designer, Certified Technical Trainer, and I do Web Design for a living as a consultant. if you really want to have an all in one book, wait till April 10th, 2001 and buy Flash 5 H.O.T. by Garo Green. He cowrote Dreamweaver 3 H.O.T. with Lynda Weinman. They know how to teach you quickly, clearly and in a very fun, enjoyable way! The kind of training books you can't put down! YOU WILL NOT REGRET BUYING THAT BOOK! I was allowed an advanced copy from a trade show. It will be the best book out for all levels - beginners and experts. If you can't wait, get this book and play with Flash 5 until it does come out! I also highly recommend checking out the training materials available at Lynda.com. You cannot go wrong with them. OK.....This book is strictly for those who know nothing about Flash or have read and been confused or got lost in other more complicated books!!! This is not for the intermediate or expert. Duh! It is obvious, but there is always one idiot that complains a book does not have enough for advanced users! This book, like all Teach Yourself Visually books gets you into the program, learning and using it in no time. It is a quick, colorful read. You do not need to be in front of the computer to learn either, though it is better to be hands on! This book will give you a great start while preventing you from getting frustrated and losing your enthusiasm! If you need to learn this for work or for career, you will need to get another, more advanced book later to build your skills. You can blow through this book in a day or two tops, then go back and use it again to reinforce what you learned or go over what you forgot, all within minutes!!! Best of luck
Rating:
Summary: really nice
Review: I bought this book hoping to broaden my foundation with Flash 5, and found the concepts covered to be very general and basic. There are lots of nice looking graphics to illustrate the concepts presented, but the focus seems to be more on the visual presentation rather than the dissemination of applicible information. If you are a beginner to flash, this book will probably help enormously, as it will give you visual cues and screen shots to associate with the flash work environment. If you understand the basics of Flash, this book will provide you with nothing more than some pictures to look at, telling you what you already know.
Rating: 
Summary: Beginner's book
Review: I bought this book hoping to broaden my foundation with Flash 5, and found the concepts covered to be very general and basic. There are lots of nice looking graphics to illustrate the concepts presented, but the focus seems to be more on the visual presentation rather than the dissemination of applicible information. If you are a beginner to flash, this book will probably help enormously, as it will give you visual cues and screen shots to associate with the flash work environment. If you understand the basics of Flash, this book will provide you with nothing more than some pictures to look at, telling you what you already know.
Rating:
Summary: Great for first time users
Review: I love this book because it sets you up with all the terminology and where everything is located and how to use it. It makes flash animation seem easy and non complicated. I was able to make my first flash animation after I was done reading. Visual books give you a quick start to begin. You won't be sorry you bought this book.
Rating:
Summary: Great for first time users
Review: I love this book because it sets you up with all the terminology and where everything is located and how to use it. It makes flash animation seem easy and non complicated. I was able to make my first flash animation after I was done reading. Visual books give you a quick start to begin. You won't be sorry you bought this book.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Assume Anything!
Review: I think of myself as a motion graphics designer grounded in Photoshop and After Effects work with minimal knowledge of Flash but a burning desire to master the program. I own Flash Web Design by Hillman Curtis, Foundation Flash 5, New Masters of Flash and this book. I've flipped through every Flash book published as of December, 2000 and purchased only those that struck a chord in me. I read this book after completing the Hillman Curtis book and this visual explanation put everything together in my mind. Its a fantastic building block to follow... and you can understand everything without being in front of your computer because the color illustrations are perfectly detailed.Don't expect much ActionScript info, but you will be introduced to its possibilities. I read this book in a day and set it down feeling secure that I finally "get" Flash and, in fact, created my first Flash web site with this as the only source reference (no user's manual). I enthusiastically endorse this book for what it taught me and its great price value. I used to look at these visually oriented books as over-patronizing coloring books-for-idiots. I am certainly an idiot.
Rating: 
Summary: Still pretty good, though a little bit disappointed
Review: If you have never learned Flash before, you should definitely check out this book. Its contents are very clear and extrememly easy to follow and it is perfect for any beginner. However, this book will not teach you how to do any of those 'cool' stuff that one usually sees on the web. Flash is a very powerful program and this book literally addresses only the pinnacle of the iceberg. I really love the way instructions are laid out in the book, but i just feel that if the authors could use more real life complexed projects as their examples, it would really help someone to learn how to laid out a project and how to put all those great tools together to churn out a cool final product.
Rating: 
Summary: Need to learn Flash quickly?
Review: If you need to learn Flash to complete a project quickly, you'll like this book. It provides a nice visual layout to give you a screen-by-screen walk-through of Flash. Even better, it actually numbers all the steps occurring for each screen.
The book explains how to work with objects, layers, symbols, instances, imported graphics, animation, sound, video, events handling, and other types of interactivity.
I would've preferred that the 'Importing Graphics' section was placed at the beginning, because I rarely build objects *within* Flash. Also, the rollover effects are rather simplistic. There is not enough information about building events-based effects. For example, what if you have several menu buttons and you want each button to show 2 different behaviors when you roll over the button with the mouse? What if you want a more complex animation associated with each of those behaviors? These are common practices, and yet, the book does not go into that level of detail. Still, aside from these shortcomings, this book will probably help you come up to speed quickly on the basics.
Rating:
Summary: "Flash in small bites" good for beginners.
Review: Small Bites: This book is one of a series of Teach Yourself Visually books, each with the tag line "Read less, learn more." Its audience seems to be those who suffer from Fear of Flash, or are spooked at the idea of the Internet or multimedia in general. Information is doled out in bite-sized chunks, as tool operations, panels and processes are patiently explained (sometimes in excruciating detail). It doesn't try to be a reference book, or a must-read for animation gurus...it is designed to be a painless introduction. If you want to learn intricate ActionScripts and interactivity, you'll need to look elsewhere. Like the other books in the series, the top of each page is elaborately illustrated with slick (if often soul-less) 3-D renderings.Some of these illustrations are helpful, and others are gratuitous and overly cute, obvious space fillers designed to plug holes in the format. Each page bottom is reserved for screen shots and step-by-step instructions. Upside: Information is presented in logical order, and Flash terms and definitions are explained well. The 13 chapters will take most beginners around an hour or more to complete. The Animation Terms Appendix is too short, but what there is of it is good. Downside: The book would be a better aid for the beginners it's aimed at if the publishers offered some downloadable online files. Nothing beats dissecting files when you're a Flash novice. And, with no mention of Photoshop, Fireworks, ImageReady, Dreamweaver, or the Mac OS anywhere in the book, it's as if the author thinks Flash exists in a vacuum in a Windows-only world. Even browsers, the delivery vehicle for most Flash animations, are given very little ink. It may be that auxiliary programs, alternate OS keyboard commands, and core concepts are tough to wedge into this format. In that case, an author should ask if the format is the tool or the master. Bottom Line: All in all, this book is a good choice for beginners who want to learn Flash basics with minimum stress. You won't master the program with the book, but you will get a solid foundation in the tools and processes. But you may not get a firm grasp of Flash's core concepts...the chunk-by-chunk approach is better at showing the trees than the forest. Consequently, some beginners who finish this book may end up feeling like a kid who has finished the classroom portion of Driver's Education, but has little behind-the-wheel experience.
Rating:
Summary: "Flash in small bites" good for beginners.
Review: Small Bites: This book is one of a series of Teach Yourself Visually books, each with the tag line "Read less, learn more." Its audience seems to be those who suffer from Fear of Flash, or are spooked at the idea of the Internet or multimedia in general. Information is doled out in bite-sized chunks, as tool operations, panels and processes are patiently explained (sometimes in excruciating detail). It doesn't try to be a reference book, or a must-read for animation gurus...it is designed to be a painless introduction. If you want to learn intricate ActionScripts and interactivity, you'll need to look elsewhere. Like the other books in the series, the top of each page is elaborately illustrated with slick (if often soul-less) 3-D renderings.Some of these illustrations are helpful, and others are gratuitous and overly cute, obvious space fillers designed to plug holes in the format. Each page bottom is reserved for screen shots and step-by-step instructions. Upside: Information is presented in logical order, and Flash terms and definitions are explained well. The 13 chapters will take most beginners around an hour or more to complete. The Animation Terms Appendix is too short, but what there is of it is good. Downside: The book would be a better aid for the beginners it's aimed at if the publishers offered some downloadable online files. Nothing beats dissecting files when you're a Flash novice. And, with no mention of Photoshop, Fireworks, ImageReady, Dreamweaver, or the Mac OS anywhere in the book, it's as if the author thinks Flash exists in a vacuum in a Windows-only world. Even browsers, the delivery vehicle for most Flash animations, are given very little ink. It may be that auxiliary programs, alternate OS keyboard commands, and core concepts are tough to wedge into this format. In that case, an author should ask if the format is the tool or the master. Bottom Line: All in all, this book is a good choice for beginners who want to learn Flash basics with minimum stress. You won't master the program with the book, but you will get a solid foundation in the tools and processes. But you may not get a firm grasp of Flash's core concepts...the chunk-by-chunk approach is better at showing the trees than the forest. Consequently, some beginners who finish this book may end up feeling like a kid who has finished the classroom portion of Driver's Education, but has little behind-the-wheel experience.
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