Idiot's Guide to Flash 5 Review

Author: David Karlins, illustrated by Paul Mikulecky
297 pages

First of all, let's get something out of the way: this isn't a book that's for complete idiots. It's a book for idiots that's complete.

Now that that's all cleared up, The Complete Idiot's Guide is a book that starts with the basics and is planned in such a way that saves you from suffering through lengthy or technical explanations before getting to the good stuff.

In fact, the first thing I liked about the book was "Let's do dessert first," a little exercise on the third page where the authors have you draw something on stage and learn to animate it right away.

The language of the book was another thing that struck me well; while formally trained designers may call a "line" a "stroke," this book uses both layman and technical terms interchangeably to help you learn what's what. It tells you what a "bezier curve" is, and illustrates each term with examples to help you learn how to use Flash 5's new Pen tool.

Another thing I like about Idiot's is that it plants the seeds of filesize knowledge early. I'm sure you've seen the culprits before: bloated Flash movies that take hours to load, spreading frustration and confusion worldwide. Have no fear, dear newbie: this book mentions the concepts of streaming, bandwidth, and filesize early on and maintains this awareness throughout the book. With any luck, you'll begin creating pieces with filesize in mind from the beginning and will save your site visitors a lot of pain and anguish.

Aside from using a few screenshots taken from Flash 4, the book has no major flaws. I disagree with the recommendation of using a framerate of 12 fps for movies (I NEVER go below 24 fps), but that's personal taste, I suppose.

One thing I found the book lacked was better explanation on the different sound export settings and synch methods. Since just about every Flash movie in existence uses sound of some sort, I believe that in-depth coverage in this area is vital to the content of any Flash book.

You've probably guessed by the title of the book that Idiot's is meant for people who either haven't seen Flash before or can't seem to get the hang of it. It covers all the steps you'll need to know in order to start making basic Flash sites and full-blown intros: everything from drawing objects to managing the Library to exporting your movie and posting it on the Web. It even goes so far as to mention the legal implications of using copyrighted music in Flash pieces, and provides a URL where you can get more information on this important subject.

The Complete Idiot's Guide is a book that's been well-thought out and is fun to read.

Level of skill this book appeals to:

Level of recommendation, based on other books reviewed:
In itself, The Complete Idiot's Guide is a good book; it's easy to understand, covers most of the basics, and should appeal to any first-time Flash user. However, I'm going to recommend that if you have an extra $10, get Foundation Flash 5. It's twice as thick, covers at least 10 times the content, and will bring your knowledge level above and beyond what you might expect. If $10 is too steep for you, then an extra $2 will get you Flash 5 for Windows and Macintosh, a somewhat less fun but much more extensive book.