Are you already up to speed on the fundamentals of Flash? Do you know how create simple animations and write elementary ActionScript? If so, you’re ready to move beyond the basics.
Macromedia Flash 8 Beyond the Basics is all about stepping to that next level. This book expands your skill set and shows you how to integrate those skills with advanced ActionScript. Through a series of carefully developed, step-by-step exercises and demo movies, you’ll learn how to build a professional, interactive Web site—using source files and designs supplied on the book’s CD-ROM. Along the way, you’ll learn about the new Flash 8 features: the improved text tool, new text rendering engine, new graphic filters, and more.
50+ Step-by-Step Tutorials:
• Format dynamically loaded text using HTML, CSS, and nested images
• Create an ActionScript-driven menu
• Build a preloader with MovieClipLoader class
• Add a progressively downloading, multi-track MP3 player
• Create a video player that allows users to control playback
• Build a slideshow that loads images and text dynamically
• Utilize components to create a feedback form
• Create a Flash plug-in detector
Customer Reviews & Comments
I must have over $1000 of Flash books since Flash 5. This book, by Shane Rebenschied, is by far the best I've experienced. I liked the fact that he includes much discussion about why one is performing a task one way as opposed to doing it another way... Shane shows you the correct, professional way. I also like the fact that the exact directions to follow in the tutorial are clearly numbered, often bold and stand out from the basic discussion. I am now going through for the second time and not reading the discussion but just doing another couple sites to get practice with these new techniques and ideas. They make sense because you change things in one place, not open every button timeline. You load one movie into another, allowing for download and cache ahead of time, for all your graphics and fonts you will use in the site. The user's computer is not constantly downloading the same items over and over as you move from one html page to another... you stay on the same one and load one SWF file after another into a master SWF file on the same html page.
If you already know a good deal about Flash or enough to get you in trouble, this Shane Rebenschied book is for you! I hope he writes the next level soon. The added videos are fantastic and very helpful.
