| From the moment I began reading How to Use Flash 5 to the moment I put it down, my face held
a constant expression of baffled bewilderment. I scanned through the pages of this book
with a feeling of awe at how ridiculously elementary it was. If it were written for
children, I'd understand; however, there's no indication anywhere that the minimum reading
age for this book begins around six. Despite a
bad first impression, I read the book cover to cover and made notes of the things that
bothered me most. You can stop reading right here, folks; this book review has officially
ended. Because this page has some more space that needs to be filled, though, I'd just
like to say a few things to the authors:
- It was very nice of you to include such in-depth instructions
on how to run Flash. However, if someone has to follow your instructions on how to run the
program from the Windows Start Menu, they probably don't have a chance in hell of ever
being able to make anything in Flash, let alone tie their own shoes.
- If this is a book that truly "starts from the
beginning," why does it begin with showing your readers how to manage assets in the
Library, before they even know how to draw anything or create symbols in the first place?
- I find it interesting how you call the book How to Use
Flash 5 when you clearly don't know how to use the program yourself. Isn't
instructing people to "Use Flash 4 Selection Style" a little... well, out of
date?
- Any book that promises to teach Flash quickly should start
with the fun stuff first, like drawing things and making them move around the stage. Any
person who's opened Flash for the first time really wouldn't care less about creating,
saving or reusing custom pallettes before they even learned how to draw a line.
- Speaking of drawing lines, I was also baffled by your choice
to show people how to draw a straight line by using the PEN tool, and not the LINE tool.
In fact, I went through the whole book and didn't find a single mention of the Line tool.
Was it omitted by accident?
- This supposedly is a book for beginners, yet I find it
troubling that the differences between "vector" and "bitmap" images
aren't explained, and that it's assumed the reader is well versed in the ways of making
images in vector and bitmap programs.
- And for my next trick, ladies and gentlement, I present to you
Part 9, Task 3: The movie clip that magically creates itself,
complete with graphics that magically tween themselves, before the authors have even
taught a person how to tween.
- Exhibit H: Part 10, Task 4: The
authors show a person how to make a button that goes to the next scene in a movie, BEFORE
they actually show someone how to make a new scene in the first place.
Honestly, now: were you guys rushing to get a Flash 5 book on
the market to make some quick money? Do you even give a hoot about the unsuspecting people
who are going to buy this book?
In a nutshell, it appears as though you came up with a list
of items, placed them in random order, then tried to make up for the terrible planning by
printing the book in full color. I sincerely feel bad for the folks who picked this book
off the shelves of a book store, looked at the outrageously high price, and decided to buy
it, thinking a book that costs this much certainly must be
good.
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