Flash

Another author that fills the pages with inane conversations because the book is so lacking in a good plot.

Bel Barret teaches writing at a community college in NJ. Her friend Vinny Vallone talks her into teaching a class of funeral director wannabes with him. Vinnie is murdered and it seems that most of the suspects are in the writing class. Bel risks her relationships and her life to solve the mystery.

This was a pretty quick read and I enjoyed it. The characters and the setting are quirky and interesting. A good series.

Professor Bel Barrett is a nice woman and so are her friends, her children, and her mother whose brain cells just needed a slight realignment. Jane Isenberg perfectly captures the multi-cultural ambiance of a community college and the dedication of those who teach there. The mysteries in this series are solid and fun. Bel is obviously enduring the joys of menopause and her references to it throughout will strike a chord with the similarly afflicted. The grimy setting of Jersey City, New Jersey is not ideal, but Isenberg almost makes the place sound appealing. I even like the author's photo on the back page. Like I imagine Bel to look, Isenberg has the kind of face you want to see on your friends-kind, bright, and smiling. The series is a fun way to pass a rainy weekend.

Let me begin by saying that I consider myself an intermediate Actionscript Programmer and have created several games with Flash, anticipating this book would assist me in my ventures.

At first glance this book seems terrific. You get a large collection of games that vary in genres. Even more appealing is the multiplayer game support.

But when you read more into you discover in the first chapters, most of it is understandable (even the physics and trigonometry) but even with your first game, you can run into troubles. I purchased this book interested in the multiplayer games. I had never done anything with this genre and wasn't sure how players could connect with one another. I discovered how its done, but the games are written with the author's program, Electroserver. This didn't bother me except that the demo included on the disk can only support five members at any one time. A little investigation on the site and I became more disappointed. To have the minimum on the license is 50 people for a whopping $299. Also the Tic-Tac-Toe example is a free download off this page. This made me wonder if the author was filling blank pages.

The book has its high points, especially the pinball and platform game. It also has its low points, such as the rapid bombardment of Actionscript (as someone else put it, little fluff), as well as the electroserver problem.

The layout of the book was very good, each section really seemed to blend into the next, building on the previous.

While I'm very familiar with Flash AS, I was happy to see the sections on trig, physics and collision detection! My maths are pretty rusty and these are areas that I always struggle with. Actually having *working code* to look at is invaluable.

The multi-user section was quite interesting too, with both basic chat and game examples. All the examples use ElectroServer as the backend, so there are some specifics which relate to that server only. However the ideas presented are applicable to any multi-user based game, regardless of the backend server.

Anyone looking for some insights to coding a game in flash MX would not go wrong in reading this book.

This is a very interesting book from quite a number of angles. The book is strong on discussing Flash centred technique, good on algortihmic tradeoffs but possible a little limited in in its key example. It will definitely help Falsh developers do better. The author is honest about the limitations of Flash as a game developmnet tool. The bottom line is that Flash is good a tightly defined games where some tradeoff with real-time interaction is allowable, but don't expect tthe full functionality (or speed) of a conventional games engine. There is a wealth of useful information in the book. If you have any handle on programming and Actionscript you will gain a lot more by taking timeover this book. The coding is good, and the algorithms are actually meaningful and useful. The author is clear about strengths and limitations of his approach A very rare characteristic of games books.

Let's face it--no one reads a Charles Knief mystery for the excellence of the writing or the tautness of the plot. It's the Hawaiian setting, with its local Polynesian/Hawaiian characters, which is so alluring, and even the violence instigated by its underworld cannot dim that allure. From a marina in Pearl Harbor, to a chase at sea on the way to Kauai, to the top of the Waimea Canyon, with its 500 inches of rain a year, Hawaii sings its siren song, and the reader follows along, not really caring how plausible or tightly controlled the plot may be.

In this novel John Caine, private eye and friend alike to Honolulu racketeer Chawlie Choy and Police Lieutenant Kimo Kahanamoku, a relative of the famed surfer, Duke Kahanamoku, saves a naked woman from her enraged husband, who later turns up dead. Fleeing from the Colombian emerald smugglers from whom she has stolen $20M of emeralds, she wants Caine to save her. Between the boat chases and the flights through Kauai's Waimea Canyon rain forest and the Na Pali coast, horrendous mayhem takes place, ranging from grenade attacks to firefights and stabbings along wild pig trails, with perennial hero Caine emerging, of course, very bloody but unbowed. Not the best of the John Caine series, Emerald Flash is still lots of fun, whether you read it to escape into an imaginary Hawaii or to revisit your favorite parts of Paradise.

While I enjoyed Knief's previous two John Caine books, I really can't get too exited about this one. The plot has a number of holes in it, particularly the relationship between Chawlie and Margo,and why Caine would want to get involved with this conniving,bossy woman is anybodies guess. Still, there's a lot of action and good use of local color. We could probably do without Caine's talking to that voice in his head all the time, and if you,re going to use the names of real historical people,get it right. The Secretary of the Navy under Truman, who killed himself, was not Vincent Forrestal, it was James Forrestal.

Great suspense, unextected plot twists, vibrant characters, and beautiful Hawaiian locales.
John Caine, is a modern knight righting wrongs and helping those in trouble. An honorable man who as experience so much death and pain that that he is become deeply wounded and seeks to put his life back in order. Unfortunately he meets Margo, and more pain and death are sure to follow.
Charles Knief, brings the Hawaiian islands to life in all of their brilliant color and majesty. The settings in this book and his others capture the real Hawaii that few really get to know.
OVERALL SCORE: (A)
PLOT: (A-), CHARATERS: (A+), DIALOGUE: (B), SETTING: (A+), ACTION/COMBAT: (A-), ANTAGONISTS: (B+), ROMANCE: (A-), SEX:(Adult Content), AGE LEVEL: (R)

I baught this book hoping that it would be an guide,overview and dictionary of AS2.0 in the same way that "Actionscript for Flash MX. The Definitive Guide" was for Flash MX.

After paying and reading this book from cover to cover, I was very dissapointed with it's depth. It doesn't even touch on extending current static classes, most of the examples are just excuses to use what you have just learned and don't really have any real world application and most of the content is more about the application than about the actionscript behind it.

I was hoping that this book would be an offset for Macromedia's hopeless documentation, but alas it wasn't. It's probably good for first time flash users, but I'll be waiting for something from Colin Mook now.

For years I labored to teach myself scripting of various kinds. As resources in that endeavor, the O'Reilly books were impenetrably dense and the "Dummies" books were so slight that I didn't feel like I was learning anything I could build on.

Then Flash came along, and in a couple of years Actionscript was added. I felt my way through some simple scripts, but still I couldn't cross the threshold into scripting anything particularly useful.

With this book, Derek Franklin and Jobe Makar have launched me across that threshold by helping me to learn Actionscript AND to understand it. By the time I had reached page 116 in this 764 page (the Target Paths chapter) I had already learned more about scripting from these pages than I had EVER learned from all the other books I've read on similar subjects.

I imagine that the only training sources better than this $45 book are the online courses which can run into the hundreds of dollars per course. As a layperson, if you want to learn Actionscript you would be well-advised to spend time and money on this book.

I'm a professional graphics programmer, most recently via Java applets. I tried to learn Flash 5, and dropped it because I couldn't see doing real simulators with it. But with MX 2004 and ActionScript 2.0, the programming model is finally to the point where I can get all the power of Flash animation and vector art, small downloads and excellent browser support & deployability, without sacrificing object-oriented programmability, plus gain outstanding server-side integration capabilities. Still, I was finding it a really steep climb up the learning curve with Flash MX 2004. I'm not the only one - I've spoken to other Java & OO programmers who despaired of the paradigm shift to Flash. But then I got this book. Now it all makes sense. Virtually every one of the 50+ beautifully designed and programmed examples gives a huge leg up on the learning curve. I've been programming for 25 years, and this is one of the best programming books I've ever read. If you're a programmer, and want to learn Flash, get THIS book. :)

I am a java programmer, eager to learn Flash fast. This book was only slightly useful. I found the chatty style just long-winded and condescending.

Here's one example (p.56):"You're probably wondering just what the panel is, anyway. In effect, a panel is effectively what is known as a nonmodal dialog box. That is, a panel can be thought of as a dialog box that does not need to be closed."

In effect, this author needs effectively what is known as a good editor.

The later chapters on actionScript are particularly weak. Too much ink spent defining terms and listing actions out of context. I needed more worked examples. I found the built-in lessons in the Flash Help more useful than this book.

On a postive note, my tired old eyes really liked the large easy-to-read font used in this book. Why the heck do so many software texts have small fonts surrounded by acres of white space?

After looking at a friend's Flash-filled website, I knew I had to learn Flash for myself. This was a great book to get started. First, all the examples actually work. Second, I was able to understand why things worked as I followed along. The author is really good at breaking down complexity into simple, clear examples, then re-combining the examples into something complex that is simple to do and understand. Flash MX is such a versatile tool that I was perplexed learning it from scratch without a book that could unravel the complexity. This one does it in quick, simple steps. As a beginner I thought I was starting out slow, learning to use one tool at a time, but suddenly I was working with layers, timelines, tweens and motion guides making smooth animations flow across the screen, and it all made sense. Actually, I felt the sort of let-down you feel when someone explains a magic trick to you: "Aww, you mean it's that easy?!" Halfway into the book I was animating graphics from my digital camera and recording and using sound effects. I usually have a hard time following "cook book" how-to manuals because I want to know why and how things work, not just what sequence of buttons to push. The author breaks down all the technical pieces into short, sweet paragraphs leading into each exercise, so I knew what was happening technically with each step. There is all the information necessary for publishing Flash animations to the Web and experimenting to find that critical compromise between bandwidth and detail. The book goes easily through tools like the bandwidth profiler and preloaders, to tailor smooth animation at modem speeds. There is lots of detail on using ActionScript to make some very professional looking effects. I found this book useful both because it has all the detail to make every exercise work right the first time - there are few manuals I can say that about! - and because it is really easy to read, with just enough information about the nitty-gritty inner workings of web animation to make learning Flash a comfortable experience. I would recommend this book without question for beginners, and to anyone who uses the basics of Flash and wants to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the tools that are available, that they haven't yet used, because each module stands on its own, so you can skip the familiar parts and pick up where you need to start learning.

I am trying to learn Flash because I have heard all of the hype. I have built some pretty basic web pages in the past, but I am interested in creating more exciting content. However, when I got the software, I was basically lost. I just couldn't get a handle on all of the concepts. This book has been a great help. Everything is super clear, and the author organized the book in a very logical manner. I am really pleased with this book. Better yet, you can download all of the working files that the author created for the book.

This book is hit and miss. Some chapters provide very useful information and reference, such as the physics modeling, while others seem to act as filler material. The subject XML and Flash, for example, can easily be found in greater depth on the net. Other chapters provide somewhat useful examples, but certainly not worth the paper they were printed on.

Another problem with this book is that most of the ActionScript is useless if you're coding with Flash MX. The chapter on using widgets, for example, is pointless, as Flash MX is now a functional OOP environment. Although the examples in the book give a general idea of advanced ActionScript--it's really geared for Flash 5--and a great deal of Flash 5 ActionScript has been replaced (depreciated).

Becuase the book is also from different authors, the writing is a bit hit and miss as well. One chapter, "Flash Interface Design", fills pages of code and screenshots, but fails to reveal the logic behind the code, or exactly how the code works at all. Instead, I'm left to hunt through the flash file on my own, and that's something I don't need a book for.

I think this has been a very popular book in the past, but with the release of Flash MX as well as the overall lack of effort on the authors part to make this more digestable, I would not recommend purchasing this book--borrow it if you need to.

These days there aren't many books out that deal exclusively with ActionScript. There's one from Colin Mook which I like, and the couple others that are out there aren't that impressive. This one isn't worth it's weight in gold but I still find it quite valuable because each chapter is written by a different author, and each of them really seems to know what they're talking about. Assuming that you know your way around Flash, this one won't waste your time going over the usual basics. At times it's a bit difficult to find your way around the sample files, but I'm learning so much just from dissecting them, and the chapters in the book explain reasonably well what's going on. Book looks a bit cheap, but then again, it's not like I'm gonna be using it much once the next version of Flash hits the shelves...

I have a total of 8 Flash books, 6 from friendsofed, two from Macromedia. This one from MM, Super Samurai, is actually the best in teaching me intermediate level Flash. For learning the basic principles of 3D, and using Flash with database, the relevant chapters in Super Samurai beat other books in my possession by miles. The explanations are clear and detailed, and the examples work. I especially love the shopping cart example used to demonstrate how to link Flash to a database using XML and ASP.

On 3D, there is simply no comparison between Super Samurai's chapter and Flash 5 Studio's chapter. Super Samurai's is easy to understand and detailed, while Flash 5 Studio just give you a few examples without much explanation. I wonder if the author of F5S really understands the examples. Even the 3D example in Flash MX Designers ActionScript Reference by Friendsofed looks muddled when compared with SS's. I have learned so much from this one book.

Strangely, when I looked for other books by the author of the chapter on XML, Michael Grundvig, the only other book that he co-wrote on this topic got a really lousy review. It just shows that publishers can give quite inconsistent quality books even with the same authors.

This book does a very admirable job for what it was designed to do - to be a guide of the new features provided in Flash MX for those of us whom were VERY familiar with Flash 5.

As a designer whom has used Flash since 1998, this book provided me with a simple tour of the newer features I should look for and use in Flash MX. While the book may not get much use past the first read-through - you don't have to worry about buying a book and skipping past the first 200 pages of fundementals to learn what was different - and that is very comforting.

If you're new to Flash - this is not the book for you. If you made your living using Flash 5 - the time you'll save quickly skimming through this book and seeing the differences between versions 5 and MX (there's quite a few of them) is definately worth the book's cost.

I don't often review the books i buy, but i was inspired by the previous review which gives a bit of an inaccurate picture in my opinion. I know Flash 5 pretty well, and i have a number of 'Beginners' books so there's no way i wanted to go over a lot of old stuff that i've already read a thousand times. That's why i bought into this whole 'upgrade' concept, and i think any of the pros looking for an early start to MX will do the same. OK, I only got it last week but it's keeping me real busy. Even some of the simple stuff, like pinning scripts and using shared objects, i know would have taken me forever to figure out so i'm really happy with this book. There's also a constant flow of examples throughout, which is exactly what i like. Right now i'm reading how to build advanced components, it's pretty heavy stuff, but the author's language is ideal (for my level at least) and even seems to make it interesting!! With reference to the Macromedia site i can't see any new features of MX that this book misses out. I know there are a couple of other MX books out there too, but if this book represents an 'attempt to get something to market quickly', it looks to me like a pretty successful one to me. Wow, i feel like i've justified my $$$ now!

I've always wondered why somebody didn't write a book specifically targeted at those who are upgrading to a new version of software they already know and use. Now somebody has. Sham Bhangal has created the perfect book for those that are Flash 5 users, wanting to hit the ground running in Flash MX. Many books cover new features, but if you already know the previous version of the app in question, you are forced to slog through page after page of information you already know. The brilliant thing about this title is that it not only covers the new features in depth, but it tells you specifically how these new features will change the way you work in Flash MX.

It's not necessarily obvious, how radically different are some of the new features found in Flash MX. This book spells it out, with clear-cut examples of how to take advantage of each feature. Bhangal's conversational writing style makes the book an easy read. The depth and breadth of his knowledge of the inner workings of the new features makes it obvious that he worked closely with the Flash MX development group.

If you want to cut through the clutter and get right to the heart of the new features in Flash MX, this is the book to buy.

This book is chocked full of great examples. The sample code alone is a VERY usefull and worth the money that the book costs.
It's for the beginning and intermediate Flash and ADO.NET person alike. It even goes into to detail about setting up your program and application delivery envoirnment. Very complete resource.

The complaints I see from other reviewers shows me their limited knoweledge of Flash, .NET, and Action Scripting and it's use it the real world. I have a hard time believing any of them read this book. I believe they are here promoting their own agenda.

I found this book very useful. It shows how to make the connection between flash and databases. Contrary to a couple of the reviews, I was able to use their example with SQL Server 2000 and ASP.Net. It showed me how to integrate flash easily into my user interface.

My only gripe with the book is that it seems they cover to many technologies (ASP, ASP.net, Access, SQL). I can kind of understand why they did that, but I would have like more depth on my technologies.

I understood Flash and vb.net, but I never really could grasp how to put the two together. I really like the way this book shows me how. It's easy to understand, but not so remedial that I didn't learn. Awesome examples also.
Great Job.

Good for beginners, but if you have Macromedia Studio MX dreams of ActionScript and database enabled real time Flash piecharts for research/statistics or clinical apps, Dream(Weaver)on...

This was a wonderful book for me as I am just beginning to use Flash. I have tried other Flash books and just could not quite understand how to use Flash and integrate it into in my work. I found Flash 5 from Scratch to be very step by step in its instruction and loved the way every new chapter built upon concepts and techniques covered in other chapters. The Web site you create is simple in design but the progression to build it really helps you learn about Flash and how to use it in Web design.

I found the Flash 5 from Scratch book great for learning Flash. Building a real world Web site using Flash was very beneficial for me. It helped me understand how to design in Flash using many of the concepts and techniques needed to create a Web site. Every chapter builds upon the next so you are using skills and concepts covered with new ones. It really helped me understand Flash and how it can be used for Web design. I look forward to other books like this! What a great way to learn. Thank you!

This book contains very good examples and is easy to follow. It would be even easier to follow if I wasn't having to continuously correct coding errors throughout the book. If you want to beef up on your debugging skills then this book is great. I am a little disappointed in the author and his quality control in publishing this book. It would be a fabulous book otherwise.

THE BAD:
First of all, there are indeed so many errors in this book, it is ludicrous. For example (page 75, number 4) , one script tells you to use "gotoAndStop" but then in the code it has written "gotoAndPlay". If you type in the code as given, the movie doesn't work properly, but if you then figure out that the author really _meant_ to put in the code what he intially said - ie: "gotoAndStop" - the movie works fine. It's that kind of thing that can really drive you nuts.

THE GOOD:

That said, I did learn (or re-learn) some programming concepts from this book and it has gotten me started in ActionScript . I'm one of those poor schmucks ( aka: "a designer") that has been trying to learn programming on my own for six years and until recently, couldn't tell a function from a variable. So the fact that this book got a few programming concepts through my thick skull made it a worthwhile read... in spite of the errors.

Gary,

Thanks so much for this book. I just bought it this afternoon after months of trying to find a book that I could relate to.

FINALLY, I understand onClipEvent(enterframe) and onClipEvent(load). You don't know how long I have been trying to get a simple CLEAR explanation, with examples, clarifying these two keywords. Simple sentences like "It happenes one time only." finally made onClipEvent(load)clear to me. Now I UNDERSTAND
the importance of onClipEvent(enterframe). Thank you so much. Clarity!

I think I can FINALLY make progress with Actionscript. You have put so many writers to shame who have attempted to explain actionscripting. For a long time I thought actionscriting was for a few insiders. It's about time someone explained THE important concepts in a simple precise manner. I really think
that actionscripting concepts are so clear to the "pros" that they don't think about breaking up these concepts into smaller parts, the essential parts, which really SHOW the meaning of the concept, the ESSENSE of the concept.

PLEASE KEEP WRITING! Finally a knucklehead like myself can understand actionscriting. And it's us knuckleheads that SHOULD be giving writers feedback! Because when you can reach us you KNOW you have a chance of reaching a VERY LARGE audience.

Please keep your ears open to the simplest of questions.

Thanks,
G. Landry