Flash Deconstruction: The Process, Design, and ActionScript of Juxt Interactive: Amazon.ca: Todd Purgason, Bonnie Blake, Phil Scott, Brian Drake: Books

Product Description

From Amazon

Flash deConstruction has something for everyone whose working life involves Macromedia Flash. Essentially it's an inside look at Juxt Interactive, the company Todd Purgason founded in 1998 and whose award-winning Flash work includes sites for Macromedia, Billabong and its own juxtinteractive site.

In Flash deConstruction Purgason and his co-authors address the problem facing individuals and companies graduating to large scale, complex Flash projects. Although a huge number of Flash sites are still built by individuals, increasingly a Flash project is a collaborative effort involving designers, motion graphics artists, information architects and programmers.

The preliminary chapters show how Juxt manages this process, from team structure, initial planning, strategy and concept development right through to beta testing and delivery.

The meat of the book, however, is devoted to deconstructing individual Flash projects. Here you'll find a ton of ActionScript developed for the juxtinteractive site, US sportswear company Billabong and nDecision--a movie maker application developed for k10k.net that makes use of Flash 5's XML capabilities. As you'd expect there's some very advanced ActionScript to pull apart, but you're gently eased into it with a chapter on ActionScript basics.

For a little light relief, each chapter kicks off with an interview. Flash luminaries like Joshua Davis, Brendan Dawes and Glenn Thomas talk about themselves, Flash and design in general. Audio of the full interviews, together with source files and other resources are available on the juxtinteractive Web site. --Ken McMahon

Book Description

The complete book on best-business practices for the Flash professional.
This is a book by professionals for professionals- It has a great combination of hard-edged ActionScripting techniques for the ambitious developer, wrapped in the context of proper workflow and innovative design and development.
The authors are high-profile authors recognized by consumers- with 100,000 visitors to the JuxtInteractive site monthly, plus the authors are regular presenters at industry conferences.
Gives best-of-breed expert advice. Working professionals-designers and non-designers alike-want to learn ActionScript as its used in the real world. This book, however, combines referential explorations of ActionScripting functionality with used-in-the-trenches techniques honed by one of the top Flash design houses-JuxtInteractive-and then adds further perspective on each subject area by including a substantive inspirational profile of how other high-profile Flash designers do it. The first part presents ActionScripting Fundamentals, not only for those new to ActionScripting, but also to explain best practices and proper workflow to those already using ActionScripting. The second part requires the readers to walk through a deconstruction of the design houses own Website; the third part requires the reader to work through the building and deconstruction of a special site developed especially for the seminar.
Todd Purgason is an award-winning Web developer and designer, and creative director at JuxtInteractive (juxtinteractive.com). He was the design presence behind Flash Web Design, 0735708967 (Hillman Curtis), and regularly appears at Flash- and Web-design conferences around the world.
Phil Scott is a member of the Juxt Interactive development team; Bonnie Blake is a Web developer and author of How To Do Everything with Flash 5, 0072127147 (Osborne-McGraw-Hill).

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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews

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2.0 out of 5 stars Lacking content, Sep 20 2003

By

TM (Canada) - See all my reviews

Ce commentaire est de: Flash Deconstruction: The Process, Design, and ActionScript of Juxt Interactive (Paperback)

This is one of those cases where the fluff and hype outweighs the content. Had I checked out the sites desconstructed in this book before ordering it, I would not have purchased this book. I was not impressed by the design and coding, and I found their attempts at deconstruction rather shallow. Several key flash files were omitted from the books' download page also.

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5.0 out of 5 stars JUXT THE BEST!, Aug 22 2002

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"mk66com" (England) - See all my reviews

Ce commentaire est de: Flash Deconstruction: The Process, Design, and ActionScript of Juxt Interactive (Paperback)

Aside from starting a small Internet adventure and shooting it to world wide fame in just a hand full of years, the guys at Juxt Interactive have written a book chock full of wonder-us delights. Though they claim the primary role of their Flash deConstruction book is to look at ActionScript, anyone buying this book will get far more than they bargained for.

Juxt demonstrate their processes of design and workflow in approaching real world application development. A look behind the scenes into their infamous Juxt Interactive site, with a tutorials in how they implement their design, and script of key sections of the site, is a real eye-opener to anyone who owns a copy of Macromedia Flash.

One of the great things about Flash deConstruction is the fact that many of the real world projects contain what Juxt describe as 'hacks'. These 'hacks' detail problems they have found with ActionScript when implementing projects on different platforms and gives detailed pointers how to overcome them. In my opinion this is what separates Flash deConstruction from the rest. How many other ActionScript books tell you about the development
glitches you are liable face?

Although this book, with the design fused in Juxt's innovative way, has a section for beginners, you need to have a decent working knowledge of ActionScript to get the best from it. It is a book of techniques for the developer to use and build upon, not a promo about Juxt.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Flash and Process book., Aug 15 2002

By A Customer

Ce commentaire est de: Flash Deconstruction: The Process, Design, and ActionScript of Juxt Interactive (Paperback)

I am always interested in studio process books. It's good to learn from the real pros that are out there everyday doing and living what we all are trying to learn. I think that this book is well designed, very informative and highly articulate. Juxt has done some amazing work, and learning from their process and hearing about what goes into large scale, fun, interactive web sites was interesting. I recommend this book to other designers I know.

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Most recent customer reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading, but ...
For an art type of site and to show creativity it is very good. My interests are commerical applications and it isn't good. Lisez davantage

Published on Aug 14 2002 by James Preston

1.0 out of 5 stars Flash deConsruct it by your self...
This review is ment to be a warning for people who consider purchasing this book. DO NOT get deceived by few positive reviews!!! Lisez davantage

Published on Jun 19 2002 by Cosmo