Flash CS3 Professional - Dynamic Learning Series

Reviewed by Robert Pritchett

Authors: Fred Gerantabee & Aquent Graphics Institute Creative Team

http://www.agitraining.com/

O’Reilly

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510572

Released: September 2007

Pages: 456

$45 USD, $54 CND

ISBN 10: 0-596-51058-6

ISBN 13: 9780596510589

Requirements: Flash CS3 Professional, 1 GB hard drive space, DVD-ROM drive, Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later or Windows XP or later. QuickTime 7.1.2 or later. Internet connectivity.

Strengths: Excellent visual and interactive approach to learning Flash CS3 Professional.

Weaknesses: None found, except my own.

Introduction

“Learning Flash CS3 Professional is like having access to a top-notch team of your very own instructors. Written by product experts and trainers who have produced many of Adobe's training titles, the book takes you step-by-step through the process of learning to use Flash CS3 like a pro.

This full-color book is organized into lessons, with easy-to-follow instructions, tips, examples, and review questions at the end of every lesson. Each lesson is self-contained, so you can go through the entire book sequentially or just focus on individual lessons

Topics covered include:

What's new in Flash CS3 Professional
Flash CS3 jumpstart
Drawing tools
Modifying and transforming graphics
Working with symbols and the library
ActionScript
Working with video and audio

The DVD that is included with the book includes video tutorials and all of the files you'll need to complete the lessons, from the starting images and elements to the final, completed Flash animations. A free Instructor's Guide is available online.”

What I Learned

Okay, I admit it, I took this book on a business trip with me and read it on the plane. The book really needs to be used while sitting at the computer and running the included DVD.

I don’t know, perhaps it is just me, but Flash animation has a negative connotation for me, based on Flash-based websites and cheesey cartoonish animations I’ve seen. I guess I’m not a “Flasher” and probably will never be one. Flash has always had a “history” with security issues ever since it was an app developed by Macromedia and this book doesn’t even have the word “Security” in the Index –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash

http://www.actionscript.com/Article/tabid/54/ArticleID/flash-insecurity/Default.aspx

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/search/index.cfm?loc=en_us&term=Flash+Security

See, animated banners on websites can only go so far before they become extremely aggravating. Adobe has turned “tacky marketing animations” into an art form.

And accessibility for the visually impaired is next to impossible when Flash is used on websites.

But I do find ActionScript 3.0 intriguing…while it competes directly with Apple video capabilities online. And perhaps that is what is spoiling me. I can use a lot of Apple tools before I need to delve into Adobe activities. With non-Mac systems™, not so much. Those systems need Adobe! Apple has better graphics apps and Adobe put Apple on the back burner after eliminating a number of engineering positions that supported Apple technologies.

And Apple gets 2^nd shrift every time there is an update. Witness the latest go-around with “Print to PDF”, Leopard and Adobe Acrobat Professional or the reasons why “Production Premium” is not “backward compatible” on the Mac platform.

And John Gruber had a thing ort two to say about the latest so-called “feud” between Apple and Adobe.

You probably already know that Flash is the basis for video websites such as YouTube and Google Video.

The most important chapters to me are the ones that dig into adding sound to movies and doing video clips, working with video and delivering the final product to the Internet.

Like the book on Dreamweaver CS3 I wrote about last month, this book has colorized graphics that sometimes have the Windows-based frames intermixed with Mac OS X frames and frankly, the Mac-based pics indeed do look cleaner.

Conclusion

This book also follows the perfected format that makes O’Reilly–based publications so good and easy on the eyes. Being able to “see” how things are done in the “Digital Classroom DVD” projects just puts the icing on the cake and is greatly appreciated.

But for me, Flash is not really in my pan.