Flash MX Upgrade Essentials: Amazon.ca: Sham Bhangal: Books

Product Description

Book Description

This is the book for you if you've been using Flash 5 for a while and are making the switch to Macromedia Flash MX: it's designed to help you get the maximum benefit from Flash MX at the maximum speed. It focuses on what's new and what's important, describing the new features, demonstrating how to use them, and discussing what they mean in the bigger Flash MX/web design perspective. Flash MX is a seriously powerful tool with a wealth of new features, including a new interface, mightily reinforced ActionScript capabilities, enhanced video and multimedia support, accessibility and usability elements, and a formidable object-based programming paradigm that might change the way you think about Flash and ActionScript. Sham Bhangal, best-selling author of Foundation Flash 5 and Foundation ActionScript, and a contributor to many books on Flash and ActionScript design, was invited to work closely on the Flash MX beta development programme. In Flash MX Upgrade Essentials Sham takes the reader on a power-users trip through the seriously cool areas of the MX release and shows what awesome potential lies within. Concentrating on new and upgraded features, this book assumes you are comfortable and competent with Flash 5. By the end of this book, you will be fully familiar with all the fundamentals of Flash MX, and ready to start exploring the new technical and creative avenues it has opened up. Flash MX Upgrade Essentials offers the most efficient way of getting up to speed with the latest version of Flash. Summary of Contents 1. Macromedia Flash MX Overview 2. The User Interface 3. The Timeline and the Library 4. Tools 5. The Scripting Environment 6. Building Blocks -- Text, masks, movie clips 7. Introduction to Flash Objects -- Buttons and Text 8. More Flash Objects -- Movie clips and the Drawing API 9. Introduction to Components -- Use and customization 10.Browser Control -- Flash and the User 11.Debugging 12.Video 13.Events 14.Advanced Component Use 15.Advanced Objects 16.Departure Lounge -- where next?

From the Publisher

If you've been using Flash 5 and you're making the step up to Macromedia Flash MX, then this is the book for you: it's designed to help you get the maximum benefit from Flash MX in the minimum time. It focuses on what's new and what's important, describing the new and enhanced features, demonstrating how to use them effectively, and discussing what they really mean in the wider Flash MX/web design perspective.

Flash MX is a seriously powerful tool with a wealth of new features, including a new interface, heavily reinforced ActionScript capabilities, enhanced video and multimedia support, accessibility and usability elements, and a formidable object-based programming paradigm that could change the way you think about Flash and ActionScript.

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Customer Reviews

14 Reviews

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
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Average Customer Review

4.1 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Straight to the point for those comfortable with Flash 5..., Jan 13 2003

By

B. Rogers (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Flash MX Upgrade Essentials (Paperback)

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.

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2.0 out of 5 stars some mistakes, but otherwise pretty good, Nov 13 2002

By

John (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flash MX Upgrade Essentials (Paperback)

There are some great aspects about this book, but also quite a few that take away from them. First of all, there are some things which are errononous -- ie: just about all of the Accessibility coverage (quite an important new feature) -- some of the things it tells you to do won't work. That piece of code is for something entirely different, not checking accessibility. Secondly, some of what is said about video is not correct as well. Finally - some of the tutorials are not completed -- it says they will be in a "later chapter" - but this doesn't seem to occur. Perhaps this book was rushed out (the typos and grammatical errors might explain this - why the review goes from a "3" to a "2"). Anyway, apart from that some valuable points and lessons in this one.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Good starter, Nov 12 2002

By

J. KIEHL "eyez" (Gap France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Flash MX Upgrade Essentials (Paperback)

This was my very first MX book
(after about 10 on Flash 5), and
I was quite happy to get an overview of the new features.
As it is an overview, some details will be
missing; as you have a good choice now,
maybe get something more in-depth.
Still, one of FoED's best authors!

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Certified flash developer
I must say, its great to learn all the new features, without having to wade through a whole book on flash mx A-Z. Read more

Published on Sep 6 2002 by Steven M. Kilingbeck

5.0 out of 5 stars This book saved me time & $$!!!!
This book is more than worth the price (even without the 30% discount!)

I totally disagree with the negative reviews. Read more