Flash 5 Visual Quickstart Guide Review

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Author: Katherine Ulrich
523 Pages

Flash 5 for Windows and Macintosh, much like the Idiot's Guide, is a book geared towards the beginner. The difference between the two is that this book is much less cartoony and covers its content with much greater depth. Each and every concept is illustrated with a diagram (sometimes two or three), and the book is packed from cover to cover with "

Tips" which give deeper information on every tool you'll encounter in Flash.

If you already own Flash 4 for Win and Mac and want to know what the differences are between this book and the older one, be sure and read the "What's New?" section below.

This book gets started a little slower than the Idiot's Guide, but for good reason. Whenever learning a new program, the first thing that's always necessary is to learn about the working environment. This book extensively and methodically breaks down the Flash authoring environment into manageable, bite-sized pieces, and shows you how to customize the new Flash 5 environment so it suits your working style.

Just like its predecessor Flash 4 for Win and Mac, any possible questions you might have about certain concepts or tools are explained in special "The Mystery Of" sections. Those of you who've made the switch from Flash 4 will appreciate this book's explanation of Flash 5's bizarre new frame selection style.

Sound is yet another topic that's covered very well; not only are the import, export, and synchronization settings explained in-depth, but this book even goes as far as helping you easily manage your sounds when working with them in the Flash timeline.

The negative aspect to having a book that's laid out like this one is that the newer or more important topics, such as Shared Libraries and SmartClips, may tend to get overlooked as they're covered with the same amount of emphasis as making gradients and smoothing lines.

In addition, this book places very little emphasis on a Flash piece's file size, whereas the Idiot's Guide encourages users to be more conscientious of the all-important concepts of streaming and limited bandwidth early on.

This book certainly covers a great deal of information and will show you how to do just about anything in Flash (with the exception of advanced Actionscripting). However, I find that the author's objectivity makes this book a little bit boring!

This book is a revised edition of Flash 4 for Windows and Macintosh.

Like the Idiot's Guide, this book covers Flash 5's new Pen tool, only in more detail. It also introduces Flash 5's new Panel system, and helps you make sense what may seem to be an annoying mess. As mentioned before, it also covers Flash 5's new frame selection style, Shared Libraries, Clip Events, SmartClips, the Movie Explorer, and replaces the old "Tell Target" action with the new "with" command. However, by its own admission, "teaching the full power of Actionscript is beyond the scope of this book."

If you bought Flash 4 for Win and Mac last year, save your money-- there isn't enough new content here to make re-purchasing necessary.

Flash 5 for Windows and Macintosh is a book that will leave few questions unanswered. Its methodical and extensive formatting leaves no room for confusion or uncertainty. However, this style also makes reading the book a little less fun than reading the Idiot's Guide or Flash 5 in 24 Hours.

Level of skill this book appeals to:

Level of recommendation, based on other books reviewed: Based purely on the amount of information this book has packed between its covers, Flash 5 for Windows and Macintosh will deliver a lot of bang for your buck. However, I recommend that if you can afford the extra $8, get Foundation Flash 5. It'll bring your skills to a much higher level than this book will be able to.