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Macromedia Flash Professional 8 Unleashed Review by Jon Snelling
Review for the Alaska and Military Members Apple User Group
It has been my pleasure to review many excellent books in the months that I've been reviewing for the Alaskan Apple Users Group. This month's review is no exception. David Vogeleer's Macromedia Flash Professional 8 is in every meaningful way PERFECT. Being a veteran user of Flash since Flash 4, I went into this review with a very specific demands. Before I opened book I sat down and made an obsessively long list of the topics I believed a proper Flash book should contain and braced myself should the author miss one. Refreshingly I was pleasantly surprised again and again as I read through the 28 impressive chapters chronicling the newest incarnation of creativity that is the Flash legacy.
The author begins his book with a chapter covering big differences -- both in appearance and layout as well as features and possibilities -- between the newest version of Flash and it's predecessors. The chapter is concise and extremely well written and benefits seasoned and fresh users alike. Seasoned users will appreciate the briefing on the changes that they will need or want to make to convert from the way they are used to doing their Flash development. Fresh Flash users will be excited by the impressive list of new attractive features which now complement the features that originally caused them to have a desire to learn Flash in the first place.
After wetting the readers appetite, the author presents a series of chapters -- similar to the ones found in countless competing books -- which explain the drawing and animation procedures of Flash. Although these chapters cover common techniques they are nonetheless well written. They contain in-depth explanations of many of not all of the options and features of certain menus windows and tabs, and also well selected screen shots that the reader can use as a base of comparison. The author also includes numerous walkthroughs that guide the user through using many of the features and techniques in the book. The author uses clear and easy to understand instructions and also includes hot-keys where applicable. Though the quality of the first seven chapters alone would probably have been sufficient to get a kind review, I was pleased that it didn't stop without mentioning ActionScript.
ActionScript is the embedded programming language in Flash. With a similar syntax to JavaScript, Java, or C, ActionScript it will have a familiar feel to most programmers of other languages. It is an enormously powerful tool that allows for dynamic behavior inside of flash programs and much more. Far from simply mentioning ActionScript, the author devotes the next ten chapters to a better presentation of ActionScript than many books which are devoted solely to ActionScript do. The author provides a beautiful introduction to ActionScript and to programming including an excellent overview of Object Oriented Programming (OOP) that rivaled the introduction provided by my OOP textbook that I used at the University of Alaska for a B.S. in Computer Sciences. The OOP introduction is clean and examples are directly applied to Flash. Again numerous walkthroughs and code examples are provided by the author. Seasoned users benefit from these sections in many ways. Early in the first chapter, the author provides comparisons between ActionScript 1.0 and the new ActionScript 2.0 which are very useful for a quick transition. You can visually see what you are used to and what you must use in future coding. Though either a seasoned Flash user or a seasoned programmer of another language may be tempted to skip some of these chapters I strongly recommend reading them all since they are packed so full of information that in skipping even a single page, even the most seasoned Flash user may fail to learn a new thing about the language.
By the time I had finished the 17th chapter of the book, it was guaranteed a great review, but it didn't stop there. Flash is wonderful but it's even more powerful when paired with other technologies. Far surpassing my expectations, the author devotes the next ten chapters to an in depth coverage of integration of Flash with many of my favorite technologies including PHP, MySQL and XML. The author gives excellent examples of both how to use Flash with other technologies as well as why a developer would want to. The author wisely chose to divide the chapters by technology rather than by type of integration which gives the reader the ability to skip chapters covering technologies such as ASP which a developer may not have experience with or fond feelings for.
In closure, this book in EXCELLENT. It is a companion for the devoted learner of Flash and the seasoned user alike. This book is worth it's weight in gold and should be found on any Flash developer's book shelf.