Yugo Reviews

This is not for the beginners, and as an advanced actionscripter myself, I gained nothing. Maybe the intermediate will learn a few things or two about duplicating movies and if-else statements, but not much more. You will know how to recreate some tired and highly copied visual effects though, something you could of grabbed from the many flash resources online, and for free. But of course, knowing and understanding is two very different things. Actionscripting is a powerful language; if you don't understand at the basic level what certain commands do, you are going to have to be happy grabbing other people's scripts and editing them to your liking, which won't take you far at all. Plus flash is a heck of a lot more than just eye candy. So the basic point is, don't think of this book as a tutorial.

I agree with Water monkey. Don't get me wrong, this is a good book for getting design inspirations and ideas, but not for learning Flash 5 the right way. There's enough books on Flash about doing the basic to intermediate stuff, but what everyone wants is a good Actionscript book. This book is better than the Flash 4 Magic book (which has tons of scripts but no explainations), and it actually does try to explain the definition and reason behind the applied scripts. One major complaint I have is quite a few chapters have scripts showed in Flash 5(a good thing) action window, but its obvious the codes are converted over from Flash 4 format, not written in the efficient manner using the dot syntax format of Flash 5. SO IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A BOOK TO SHOW HOW TO CODE PROPERLY IN THE FLASH 5 WAY, THIS BOOK WILL DISAPPOINT YOU. The codes in this book still use the // and ../ or /: way of addressing, which is what Macromedia trying to phase out with version 5. Well, that's my two cents on this book, great for visual inspirations, not for learning advanced Flash 5 script properly.

This book is for those Flashers who know practically everything about Flash. I would say this book is the door to "Flash heaven". If you don't know Flash at an advanced level, you'll be more confused than a duck. The authors in this book talk about their companies, webpages,goals, and inspirations. The lessons featured in this book are VERY abridged which means you get only a drop of rainfall. But the point of this book is not for learning Flash. It's more like using Flash on an emotion level and the authors explain their concepts on how they want to affect other people with Flash. If you know Flash to the max, this book would be the last book you'd probably want to read. It really ties in Flash with the real world. Overall, an awesome book and very interesting to learn about what the famous web designers are thinking and some of the methods they use in their Flash projects.