Author :: Nick Vandome
Publisher :: Computer Step
Rating :: (out of 5)
Recommendation :: half-half. If there were no other books on this topic available, I'd take it.

:: Full Review
I was reading this book because I create websites. While I am rather OK with creating websites using the now-age-old-technology of HTML, I am still an alien to interactive websites and...you know, those kind of animated things you often see in websites these days. For those who are as foreign as I am about these things, they're called 'FLASH'. Flash was created by Macromedia, and I have to admit the result of using flash for websites is amazing. You can make pages of a book turn using flash, people can walk across sidewalks with flash, websites can be interactive and animated....as interactive and animated as you wish. It's really quite funky.

When my clients wanted something with more 'oomph', I was running a cold sweat cause I didn't know how to make things flashy! All I knew was how to make webpages and design it so that it is aesthetically pleasing...well, as pleasing as I can, anyway.....but let's NOT discuss my website creating and designing capabilities, ok?

Ahhh...the book. On the cover, it said it is perfect for 'beginners' and 'experts' alike and I have to agree with the statement. The only problem was that the begining of the book was perfect for beginners like me...and then the last portion of the book was good for only experts.

While I understood everything the author was trying to teach me about creating animation using flash, it was concise and too many 'short-cuts' were there. In an effort to live up to their statement 'in easy steps', they had to cut back on a lot of pages and maybe they had to leave out some boring old explanations and cut through the chase...just give you everything you'd need to use flash.

Sure, they said that you would be able to use Flash MX in easy steps but towards the end, they sort of like..maybe, cut the book in half or something. it seems like there are lots of things missing there that beginners like me feel like going 'duh? did i leave anything out? Are there pages in this book that's missing? Did I accidentally skip a para or something?'

The wonderful thing about this book is that it's all in full-color and you can see the pictures and images that they use in the book and relate it to the program that you're using. That's very useful for dummies like me. I have this constantly problem of locating simple things like 'menu bars', 'tabs', 'close window buttons'...etc. So, those images there were pretty useful.

But sadly, maybe that is why they wanted to cut cost, since the whole book is printed on expensive and high-quality paper (glossy ones, at that) and the book is in full colour, they had to cut back on the number of pages? That's my guess. I don't know about yours.

:: Flash MX in easy steps - Nick Vandome.