Product Description

Are you already up to speed on the fundamentals of Flash? Do you know how create simple animations and write elementary ActionScript? If so, you’re ready to move beyond the basics.

Macromedia Flash 8 Beyond the Basics is all about stepping to that next level. This book expands your skill set and shows you how to integrate those skills with advanced ActionScript. Through a series of carefully developed, step-by-step exercises and demo movies, you’ll learn how to build a professional, interactive Web site—using source files and designs supplied on the book’s CD-ROM. Along the way, you’ll learn about the new Flash 8 features: the improved text tool, new text rendering engine, new graphic filters, and more.

50+ Step-by-Step Tutorials:
•    Format dynamically loaded text using HTML, CSS, and nested images
•    Create an ActionScript-driven menu
•    Build a preloader with MovieClipLoader class
•    Add a progressively downloading, multi-track MP3 player
•    Create a video player that allows users to control playback
•    Build a slideshow that loads images and text dynamically
•    Utilize components to create a feedback form
•    Create a Flash plug-in detector

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93142 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 456 pages

About the Author
Shane Rebenschied graduated from the Art Center College of Design in 1998 with an emphasis on traditional and digital media. His work has appeared in the Society of Illustrators LA and NY annuals as well as a national juried exhibition at Cal Poly Pomona University,"Digitally Propelled Ideas". A professional Illustrator and Macromedia Flash designer, developer, consultant, he lives in the Arizona desert. Past clients include: Scholastic, Harper Collins, Harlequin, Ziff Davis, Backpacker Magazine, X-Files Magazine, McGraw-Hill, Vanderbilt University, Phoenix New Times, Miami New Times, and San Francisco Weekly.

Customer Reviews

Best Flash book I ever bought!
I must have over $1000 of Flash books since Flash 5. This book, by Shane Rebenschied, is by far the best I've experienced. I liked the fact that he includes much discussion about why one is performing a task one way as opposed to doing it another way... Shane shows you the correct, professional way. I also like the fact that the exact directions to follow in the tutorial are clearly numbered, often bold and stand out from the basic discussion. I am now going through for the second time and not reading the discussion but just doing another couple sites to get practice with these new techniques and ideas. They make sense because you change things in one place, not open every button timeline. You load one movie into another, allowing for download and cache ahead of time, for all your graphics and fonts you will use in the site. The user's computer is not constantly downloading the same items over and over as you move from one html page to another... you stay on the same one and load one SWF file after another into a master SWF file on the same html page.
If you already know a good deal about Flash or enough to get you in trouble, this Shane Rebenschied book is for you! I hope he writes the next level soon. The added videos are fantastic and very helpful.

Great for Professionals with Flash Experience
I highly recommend this book if you, like myself, are a professional in the media industry with experience in Flash. While the 'newbie' will benefit from this book, I find that knowing the terms, interface and minimal Actionscript syntax are very useful to understanding and succeeding with the tutorials in this book.

I searched high and low for this type of resource - a book which explains step by step how to do advanced actions in Flash utilizing semi-advanced explanations. In other words, the tutorials are written for both the newbie and intermediate user to understand. You don't have to be a developer to 'get' what the author is saying. Whoo-hoo!

Once I complete the exercises in this book, I am confident that I will be able to further my studies with more advanced Actionscript tutorials.

Great for Beginners/Bad for Reference
I bought this book because I was going to a fast paced training course and I needed some "prep work" to insure that I didn't get lost in the class. This book is designed with the very basic principles of training, tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you just told them. So yes, it is going to repeat items such as shortcuts and the like. However it is also going to provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to do use some of the advanced features of Flash while also providing that "hand on" approach that us programmers love. When was the last time you read a programming book that didn't have instructions and then felt you could jump right in and program?

Please note that this book is not a replacement for proper training, especially if you wish to really be a wiz at it; however, it will give you the foundation you need to get over the mechanics of using the application.