MX

Since there are some big changes on models later than 1990, this book won't be very useful if you want to use it on a car earlier than 90. also, it is not quite easy to understand if you don't have any background knowledge on cars.

I've been a ColdFusion programmer for about three to four years now, but if I hadn't read Ben Forta on ColdFusion 4.0, I would have really not understood this book. There were so many typos and incorrect spellings in certain sections of the book that I wondered if the author was testing us. I was really impressed by ASP.NET for Dummies which I highly recommend, but this was a real disappointment. The Flash-CF program interactive you download was very interesting, but considering the download also included only two downloaded tables persons and departments, I wondered why some of the book's code asked for a table called employees. (page 93) Also XAsisTitle (page 83) -- very bad taste, but it's right next to YAxisTitle so I guess we're supposed to figure that out. Also I believe there is no ColdFusion internal function for Sqrt (page 92) so when you poor programmer try to program that -- you get a please define variable Sqrt. Not recommended for the faint of the heart. Ben Forta forever.

This might be a good book, but its hard to tell since the print is microscopic. The code examples are even tinier. Since there's no CD-ROM included, you have to type in the examples but that's difficult to do when one hand is holding the magnifying glass.

For starters, the book itself is really good; I did learn a lot about DWMX 2004 that I wasn't as familiar with as I'd like to be, however, the errors that showed up (yes, not only in the content but in the answers to the sample questions) were not only disturbing, but should be a pretty big concern for those who have less of a knowledge of the tool.

The exam questions were of little relevance to the book--that is, there were very limited questions that I felt I gained any insight to by painstakingly reviewing the book that is supposed to be what you need to pass the exam.

In fact, I will firmly state that I passed the exam based on real-life experience and exposure to the tool and HTML, ColdFusion, Javascript and CSS instead of what was in the book. That was pretty disappointing.

Again, I do find that the book was great for helping expose me to some of the features I hadn't really checked out before, but I cannot honestly give credit to the book for helping me pass. There is some core understanding that it will help you with, but nothing is going to get you through this exam like "real life" experience.

This book is ok, especialy if you are a newbie to CF programming. My problem with this book is that it reads alot like the CF 4.0-5.0 books that I've seen. The vast majority of the chapters are the same as the books befor this one, which is fine if you haven't used CF before. If you have, save your money, and get the CF MX Developer Cookbook, or The CFMX Bible, which will give you more "how to" info. You'll find the same how to create queries, how to create a loop, how to ...etc. type info that the CF 4.0-5.0 books offered. Of course this book includes new info (e.g. using CFC's, new functions. etc), but there's not enough of this to justify the money. Again this book is fine if you're new to CF, but if you've got experience with at least one previous implementation of CF, save your money, and buy one of the other books I mentioned.

This tome is basically two books mashed together. The first being a set of Flash articles while the second is THE actual Actionscript 2.0 dictionary. While seemingly through, when you actually need to use it the index will fail you and you will need to look either at the dictionary table of contents (starting on page 411) or thumb through the second half of the book.

Note: You won't find much information on any of the various components that come with Flash. This is a purely Actionscript 2.0 dictionary. Another area that is missing is any details concerning the professional features of Flash MX 2004 like slides and forms.

The two good things about this book are that it is relatively inexpensive and there are numerous examples.

While most of this book is the same material that comes with Flash in the help panel, there are also several articles in the beginning of the book. Of these articles, there were a couple that were REALLY good, changing the way I think about programming in Flash. A few of the other articles however seemed to be of less quality and not well thought out. Either way for the things I learned, it was certainly worth the cost.

Finally a really easy to use quick resource for Action Script. O'reilly's was good but, stopped at 1.0.
This is an excellent book for 25 bucks and it's actually easier to use than the Help section of Flash. Buy it before they raise the price!

on the outside and when you browse through it looks to be pretty concise, the problem lies in the fact the book and cd don't match, I've seen other reviews that say they received no .fla files I have the .fla files but the work files are actually the same as the finished files except for the small fact that they don't work (code is exactly the same from what I can tell actionscripting wise but the examples never work and I spend more time deciphering the mistakes to double check my work than I do learning the ideas. Maybe they should have made this a bug testing book at least you would have a chance to learn something.

This book is decent...but leaves a lot to be desired. The cd that comes with the book includes source files to work on the different chapter projects...but it does not contain final versions of them....so you'd reason that they would be on the flashmxmagic website for download....that seems to have "magically" disappeared as well. Instead of rushing to publish this book so it would come out close to the release of Flash MX, the publishers should have made sure the website was up and that the cd contained final source files rather than demos of other macromedia software. This book is alright, but if you really want something intuitive, I'd recommend waiting until Phillip Kerman's Actionscripting in Flash comes out in July...or buying his book on Flash 5 actionscripting.

If you've mastered the basics of Flash MX and are looking for more, then Flash MX Magic really delivers. Rather than providing tiny chunks of Flash functionality, the book gives you 15 full Flash projects to demonstrate the features of Flash MX. Yep...actual projects you can tinker with, break apart, break entirely, fix again, and eventually create something brand new!

The book comes with a CD containing all the FLAs and files you need for each chapter project and the chapters themselves are very easy to read with plenty of illustrations. It's always great to see how other Flash developers handle code, and the authors of this book are really among the best in the business.

You'll certainly want a good foundation in Flash ActionScript before diving into this book, but it's definitely one to put on your list. Also, the illustrations make it much more accessible for users who tend to shy away from books that only have lines and lines of code. And let's face it, you can never have too many books on Flash or samples of ActionScript code!

We all pretty much agree that the book is rather thin and covers topics in a very minimal and thin way, but after all, we were going to get our free 15 % off on the test.

I went to vue.com, after buying the book, signed up for the exam and just when i put in the voucher code a nice message came up:
" This promotion is VALID TIL 31 / 2003".

Great job!

I don't recomed this book simply cause you can buy something better, covering all topics extensivly and in details.
PLUS THE DISCOUNT ON THE TEST IS NO LONGER VALID!

This book is full of errors. The "accompanying" web site to which book corrections or errata is published is no longer active.
What a fascinating purchase. There is nothing anyone can do with this book, except perhaps to level a wobbly table.

i just passed the test. well, as mentioned in other reviews, you need more than this book. and yes, the book is too thin.

however, this book will give you a taste of the questions for the exam, the overall difficulties of the review questions is somewhat similar to the ones in the exam.

afterall, its free if u are planning to take the exam coz it gives you 15% off the exam fee. so why not buying it??

I think the author has tried a little too hard to be different. I like the idea, but the book is quite meaningless.

I didn't think much of the author's websites. She writes a lot about design concepts & principles, but to me most of her flash projects don't look or feel very professional. She hardly utilises the potential of Flash MX and there's hardly any use of vector graphics. On top of all that, there's a lot of silly poems throughout her projects.

Don't waste time on this.

Seol Euna's book looks lovely on your desk. It has beautiful graphics and a lovely design. It is essentially useless if you want to learn anything about Flash MX. The directions range from extremely detailed to extremely vague. The quality of the writing suggests that the editor is new to the English language. Non standard language is used throughout. There is no index to find anything. From her web sites it is clear that Ms Euna is a successful designer. She is not a successful author.

BEAUTIFUL BOOK, ASSUMES SOME KNOWLEDGE IN FLASH AND OTHER PROGRAMS.

I can only believe that those who gave this book more than 2 stars either know the author or work for the publishing company. How could one possibly give a book that contains no less than 5 errors on the first page of coding a passing grade?
In my mind this book epitomizes the whole tech boom - "quick, let's get it out there while the technology is hot and then fix it later".
Thank goodness it's out of print and no longer for sale here. It's so bad that I felt compelled to review it still for those who may find it on another site. Jessica Spiegel is undoubtedly a great programmer but an awful teacher, and New Rider's - shame on you!
Unless you want hours and hours of frustration avoid it like the plague!

I was left scratching my head after the first chapter. The screenshots do not even match up with the text on the same page! The author, reviewers (if there were any), publishers and editors should be ashamed. I've never seen a book that was so unsuitable for publication. I hope the author will review her work in the future.

This book is definitely NOT for beginner. I am not sure if it is for advanced user either. Step-by-step instructions are not exactly clear. Author never really explain why she do thing the way she does. So, I alway feel like I am blindly following her instructions. The worst part is that she put the instructions on one page and then put the samples of Actionscript on 3 pages later. So, I always have to flip the page back and forward. VERY VERY irritating! I am often too lazy to write a book review, but this book is just so bad that I have to write my first one. I STRONGLY suggest people NOT to buy this book. You probably will learn more by going to the Macromedia Flash developer site than spending [money] on this truly badly organized book.