Product Description

Flash is one of the most engaging and innovative, and versatile technologies available—allowing the creation of pretty much anything from simple slideshows, animated banners and icons and cartoons, to Rich Internet Applications, Interactive videos, and dynamic user interfaces for web sites, kiosks, or DVDs. The possibilities are endless, except that now, it just got better. In 2007, Adobe released Flash CS3, which boasts a whole host of new features, including fully customizable workspace, full ActionScript 3.0 support, a PSD importer, a tween-to-code animation converter, and much more. And this book is all you'll need to learn Flash CS3 from the ground up, or learn about all these new features, if you already have previous Flash experience—Flash experts Tom Green and David Stiller take you step-by-step through all facets of Flash CS3, with the emphasis firmly on good design techniques that you use in your own projects.

• Learn Flash design from the ground up, or just get to grips with the new features, with a series of step by step tutorials.
• Provides an easy introduction to ActionScript 3.0 coding, but the focus is mainly kept on design.
• Learn from the expertswritten by renowned Flash designers Tom Green and David Stiller.

What youll learn

• The ins and outs of the Flash CS3 interface
• How to use all of Flash CS3's essential features, such as text, graphics, and animation
• How to use video and sound effectively in Flash
• The basics of ActionScript 3.0
• Building Flash user interfaces rapidly using components.
• How to populate a Flash movie with dynamic data such as XML.
• The Basics of creating Flash Lite applications (Flash for mobile devices)
• Using Cascading Style Sheets with Flash
• Optimizing and publishing your Flash movies

Who is this book for?

This book is for both beginners who want a solid grounding in Flash CS3, and designers with previous Flash experience, who want to get up to speed with the new features.

Summary of Contents

• Chapter 1: Learning the Flash CS3 Professional
• Chapter 2: Graphics in Flash CS3
• Chapter 3: Symbols and Libraries
• Chapter 4: ActionScript Basics
• Chapter 5: Audio in Flash CS3
• Chapter 6 Text in Flash CS3
• Chapter 7: Animation in Flash CS3
• Chapter 8: Video in Flash
• Chapter 9: Using the Flash UI Components to Build Interfaces
• Chapter 10: CSS and Flash
• Chapter 11: Dynamic Data (XML) and Flash
• Chapter 12: Going Mobile in Flash
• Chapter 13: Optimizing Flash Movies
• Chapter 14: Publishing Flash Movies

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3900 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-24
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 600 pages

About the Author
Tom is currently Professor of Interactive Media in the School of Media Studies at Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Toronto, Canada. He has written 4 previous books on Macromedia technologies, and many articles for numerous magazines and web sites, including the MX Developers Journal, Community MX, and Computer arts. Lastly, he has spoken at over 20 conferences internationally, including FITC, MX North, Digital Design World, TODCON, and SparkEurope.

David is a career multimedia programmer/designer whose portfolio includes NASA, Adobe, and major US automotive and boat manufacturers. He likes anaglyph 3D photography, finely crafted wooden game boards, Library of Congress field recordings, and Turkish coffee. David is self-taught and gets a kick out of sharing \"aha!\" moments with others through consultation, mentoring, and regular contributions to the Adobe Flash and ActionScript forums. He is a resident author at Community MX, a web development training site geared toward Adobe products. David lives in Virginia with his amazing wife, Dawn, and his beguiling daughter, Meridian.

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Customer Reviews

OK textbook
Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers (Foundation)
I think it is a very good overview book. You get tour of everything - drawing, sound, and video. There are some omissions in sequences of instructions but it keeps your memory cells on alert - it keeps you from being automation, you actually make an effort to remember something and then use it in as agile manner as you can manage. If you do not remember you have to backtrack and earmark, and it is not nessecarily a bad thing.
Good work overall. I am not giving it 5 stars because I am old grudge.

Great book - no CD :/
I just started using this book to learn Flash CS3. I think it is very easy to understand. However, the one downfall I do not like about it is that the author keeps referring to examples for the user to open as if a disk was included with the book, but isn't. It is just difficult to keep up or understand where they are going. Other wise I am learning tons!

Solid and Fun
Overall this is five-star survey of Flash CS3, written for people with slight knowledge of earlier versions of Flash and some more familiarity with basic graphic programs (primarily Photoshop and Illustrator) and web design. The treatment of CSS covers most of what any designer or developer will need to know in the course of any average Flash project. The introduction to ActionScript 3.0 is itself worth the price of the book and serves as a beginner's course to more thorough AS3 books, of which there are plenty.

I doubt many people read a book like this cover-to-cover. Typically, the reader will head for a particular subject heading, read part of the chapter and try out the exercises. And this is where the text really shines--the exercises are extensive and presented in an accessible, friendly fashion.

People who are just starting Flash now are very lucky. Although there have been voluminous Flash manuals for years, most were aimed either at the complete novice who wanted to learn the basics of timeline animation, or emphasized some abstruse new features, particularly in programming, image filters or video development. Now at last we have some well-written books aimed at the vast middle market of designers.