Flash 8 Cookbook: Using the Flash Ide to Build Flash Animations and Applications

This is an excellent book for anybody who doesn't want to dig around entire chapters looking for an answer to a simple question about how to do something in Flash 8.

I am not keen on any book that has Cookbook in the title. This book however is more of a Hanes manual for your old Volvo 240. You will have lots of shop spills (coffee not oil) and dog eared pages on this when you finally move on to a future version of flash. Even then this will become a great tool. The book has four main solution sections: creating content, building interactive interafaces, using projects (I never get around to actually doing that!) and adding multimedia and data. O'Reilly put a lot into this book, with a load of solutions, with the if, how, why and here you go. Best if your up to speed and know your way around Flash well. For me, its a matter of understanding and implementing solutions as I encounter them. "Damn, how do I best deal with that problem? - Dunno? Read the book". Short and too the point, you will need this if your a professional - either from the design side or the programming side of Flash. Not much use to students, though educators should read it through and get up to speed to increase the amount of knowledgeable students coming out of courses (enough of the bouncing balls already).

As an intermediate Actionscripter, I find this book incredibly useful on a daily basis. It's well-organized and well-written, with several juicy tips and tricks.

This is one of those books where having lots of authors results in a better value. For such a wide and still fast-growing field as Flash development, it takes many points of view to ensure that your own is part of the mix. In my experience, most tech books have one or two tech editors. This one had 9. Finding a Flash solution is easy because the book's format is consistently Problem -> Solution -> Discussion. This facilitates homing in on what you need. The discussion is where the true learning value is concentrated for those who want to go beyond dealing with their current production challenge. <br /> <br />One important aspect of this book should be mentioned. The authors concentrate on Flash-based, authoring-time solutions. ActionScript is not the focus -- even though it plays a role in many solutions here. If you are looking for a focus on ActionScript, you may want to consider a different book. <br /> <br />With that proviso only, I recommend this book.