Rating: 
Summary: Unprofessional
Review: "Confidence Builder" is the title of the first chapter. Luckily, there was a file on the CD to show what the animation was supposed to look like when it was finished. I followed all the steps for what was supposed to be a 15-minute tutorial. To my great disappointment, when I viewed my my animation, my movie didn't look the same as the "confidencecomplete.fla" file. So, I redid all the steps. And then I redid them again. And yet again. I must have redone the lesson a dozen times or more. After about 3 hours, I finally understood enough about Flash mx to realize that Mr. Sanders had omitted an essential instruction. Nowhere had he told us that it was necessary to set the color visibility at 100% for the text clip in the 10th frame. Without that step, the Text Clip remained at 0% visibility throughout the animation! Actually, I would like to say that this chapter was for me, indeed, a tremendous confidence builder. When I finally figured out all by myself what was wrong with the instructions, I can honestly say that I felt on top of the world.
Rating:
Summary: Unprofessional
Review: "Confidence Builder" is the title of the first chapter. Luckily, there was a file on the CD to show what the animation was supposed to look like when it was finished. I followed all the steps for what was supposed to be a 15-minute tutorial. To my great disappointment, when I viewed my my animation, my movie didn't look the same as the "confidencecomplete.fla" file. So, I redid all the steps. And then I redid them again. And yet again. I must have redone the lesson a dozen times or more. After about 3 hours, I finally understood enough about Flash mx to realize that Mr. Sanders had omitted an essential instruction. Nowhere had he told us that it was necessary to set the color visibility at 100% for the text clip in the 10th frame. Without that step, the Text Clip remained at 0% visibility throughout the animation! Actually, I would like to say that this chapter was for me, indeed, a tremendous confidence builder. When I finally figured out all by myself what was wrong with the instructions, I can honestly say that I felt on top of the world.
Rating: 
Summary: Not recomended
Review: Disapointing I think describes my opinion on this book. For the price that I paid I was expecting a full lesson on how to build a site from scratch. What I got was bits and pieces of already done work that we are supposed to look at off of their CD that comes with the book and figure out for ourselves what they did. The instructions are confusing and the layout is all over the place. The book starts out with a confidence builder which is probably the only good part of this book and why I gave it a 2 star instead of 1 star rating, but even that sorta is a let down after you get through it. At least this first part actualy let us build something for ourselves with instructions on how to do each step of a Preloader for our would be flash web site. Even that though stoped before it was done only to be continued later. The book jumped all over the place and it relied to much on us having to open files of work they did and you didn't really want to do it yourself as it was right there in front of you already done. It was also teaching things that were being shown on a fully done site they built but the way they were going about it was just making me frusturated rather then teaching me. They would tell you to open this file then give you some words about something and then the next page would have you opening another file without you having done anything. Some of the instructions didn't even work without you having to do more then they tell you to. I can't say how disapointed I have been so far. When I saw this book that said "Complete course" I was thinking this would be like taking a college class and going step by step until we were able to build our own web site using Flash MX. I coudln't have been more wrong. This will teach you the basics but its more like analyzing a site they supplied for you on the CD and you sorta have to take it apart and try and see what is what as you dig through things you won't learn about until later. To this day even after finishing this book I still can't really say I could build my own Flash MX site due to what was learned in this book. The other books I have bought have been much more helpful and if you like me are looking for a book on how to build a Flash MX web site, stay away from this one. It will cause more trouble then it's worth. Hopefuly someone will get it right and give a good book that will step by step show us how to build our own Flash MX site, but this book definitely is not that book.
Rating:
Summary: Don't buy this book!!!
Review: Don't bother with this book. All it will do is confuse you. I didn't learn a single thing after going through the first section. And the only reason I was able to find my way through it is because I have a basic understanding of Flash 5. This book won't teach you anything!!! I wish I read the reveiews before I bought the book. If I could give it no star at all, I would.
Rating:
Summary: Poor quality and confusing text
Review: I have to agree with the other reviewers. Whoever did the quality assurance on this text should be ashamed. There are an incredible number of errors and dead end instructions. This is a confusing text and not even worth checking out of the library, let alone buying. Try Lynda Weinman's Flash MX HOT (Hands On Training) for a much better resource.
Rating:
Summary: Poor quality and confusing text
Review: I have to agree with the other reviewers. Whoever did the quality assurance on this text should be ashamed. There are an incredible number of errors and dead end instructions. This is a confusing text and not even worth checking out of the library, let alone buying. Try Lynda Weinman's Flash MX HOT (Hands On Training) for a much better resource.
Rating:
Summary: Bad Lessons
Review: I'm glad I am not the only one that hated this book. It was required for a class that I took, mostly as a reference guide instead of for the tutorials. All of the lessons were based off finished files on the cd and didn't really teach anything, mostly renaming buttons and watching cheesy animations. The section on action scripting is disorganized and is about scripting language theory more than teaching what types of script does what. Nothing learned here.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time or money
Review: I've read some of William Sanders other books and thought they were decent works; so when I saw this book on sale for 50% off I grabbed it. After reading the first two chapters and then skimming the rest of the book (as well as looking at the samples on the CD) I can tell you that I'm totally disappointed. Frankly, if this book was free it would still be over priced. I say this because the book is virtually worthless from a learning point of view. And to make matters worse, as others have already pointed out, this book is full of errors and incorrect information. If you're new to Flash MX the errors and misinformation in this book alone are going to provide you with endless hours of frustration; not to mention a lot of wasted time and effort.
Do yourselves a big favor and avoid this book and skip quickly to any other option for learning Flash MX. You'll be glad you did!
Rating:
Summary: horrid
Review: incorrect pictures, lack of filenames ("drag the main project movie file from the CD-ROM onto your desktop" - there is no file called anything similar so you have to guess), dead end instructions, lack of explanations or results. And that's just in the first session. Some of it you can go back and learn on your own by realizing their mistakes, but most of the omissions and errors are beyond correction. i've been banging my head on my desk trying to determine what i've done wrong, and figured i'd come to amazon to see what the reviews of the book were like. Glad to see i'm not alone. i've never given a book review before but had to save other starving artists like myself from wasting their money. This book is absolutely terrible.
Rating:
Summary: horrid
Review: incorrect pictures, lack of filenames ("drag the main project movie file from the CD-ROM onto your desktop" - there is no file called anything similar so you have to guess), dead end instructions, lack of explanations or results. And that's just in the first session. Some of it you can go back and learn on your own by realizing their mistakes, but most of the omissions and errors are beyond correction. i've been banging my head on my desk trying to determine what i've done wrong, and figured i'd come to amazon to see what the reviews of the book were like. Glad to see i'm not alone. i've never given a book review before but had to save other starving artists like myself from wasting their money. This book is absolutely terrible.
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