Sams Teach Yourself Macromedia Flash MX 2004 in 24 Hours

I love books that contain a series of lessons that the student must type in and execute, taking them from zero understanding to fairly knowledgable about a product. Flash is too difficult to learn by just "poking around", and you can't learn by reading a reference manual and then confronting the daunting user interface. THIS BOOK gently forces you to use almost every part of flash with those simple lessons. The book has been well proof-read, so I was always able to trust the instructions and get the desired results. Now that I'm done I can try all sorts of exotic things that I see in other books and on the web. Well worth the money!!! (But buy it used, of course...)

I started to get interested in Flash, not because of its vector art angle for the web, but for its ability to produce high quality web presentations for any platform: think Java as art. I'm very comfortable with CorelDraw and Illustrator, so picking up the drawing tools of Flash was second nature. However, it's the programming side of Flash that has me beat. I admit it, I'm a visual/word guy, not a logical programming nerd. But, to do Flash right you have to learn the nuts and bolts as well as the Action Scripting (Flash's programming language). I'm hear to say that one Phillip Kerman has done himself proud. He's produced the best Flash MX intro tutorial I've found. I tried lots of books from the library before I actually bought this one, thank goodness. This book will guide you through the introductory steps as well the later Action Scripting with a gentle hand. The only complaint I have is that he doesn't quite explain in sufficient detail why you're performing a certain task. For example, I stumbled over why you had to create a symbol within a symbol to achieve a rotating wheel until I pondered on it for a while. It's not obvious why, but eventually you'll find it is accessible. So, do yourself a favor if you're a Flash wannabe, get this book.