[.ca] Flash 5 Magic (ISBN 0735710236)

From Amazon.co.uk:
If you liked Flash 4 Magic you're going to love Flash 5 Magic: With ActionScript. But first, a health warning. This is not the book to choose if you've just decided that there might be something to this Flash thing after all and it may help your career prospects to find out a little about it. There are plenty of Flash primers out there, but this isn't one of them. As the title suggests, the emphasis is on ActionScript, and as with other books in the Magic series, specific features and techniques are demonstrated through practical projects. The book is targeted at Web developers who want to make more effective use of Flash and so the authors have gone to great lengths to ensure that the projects are "real and relevant". Six core categories are identified--online entertainment and streaming video; education, games and simulations; product promotion and brand marketing; Web retailing and XML integration; freelance portfolio and rich media/animation; and external database integration. Web-site concepts are developed for each of these comprising a number of individual projects. Education, games and simulations, for example is FishStik Educational Software. In developing Flash content for the FishStik site, you cover among other things "Working with Arrays", "Handling Keyboard input", "Programming with Trigonometry" and "Programming the Collision Detection of Multiple Projectiles". As you may have guessed, you also end up with some rather good Flash games. If you went from beginning to end, there's very little about the practical application of ActionScript you wouldn't know. More likely you'll dip in for help in overcoming hurdles when time's getting tight and you don't have your own answers. --Ken McMahon

good cookbook FOR EXPERIENCEDS USERS:
My title spells it out. I read these other reviews and don't know whether to laugh or pity. I think this is a great book for general practice. Specifically analyzed.. the contents are of pointless bells and whistles - not very practical. As if you haven't noticed already, all these people that give bad reviews(regardless whether it's this book or another INTERMEDIATE Level book) are either newbies to flash or kinda dumb. They're impatient dummies who try to walk and run without having learned how to crawl. It explicitly states that this is a intermediate level book. Even if you are intelligent, I seriously doubt that you can learn Flash without the foundational info... especially if you don't have design background. And let me spell it out for the blind. Of course, you're going to have trouble with Flash 5 Magic Content, you haven't even studied the basics. New Rider books are usually on the mark! and rather exciting compared to other books of this nature.

These trainers need training.:
I am getting so frustrated at the number of books from alleged experts in a subject. Maybe they know their material, but their knowledge didn't make it to print without a significant amount of damage. Would it that be hard to have someone unfamiliar with the book try to complete the exercises before they publish it?

Mixed review:
Going through enough examples in the book, I found it inviting...though I still say that they need to make the context more professional. Otherwise a good learning material.

Intermediate to Advanced:
I really am enjoying this read, for many reasons. I like all the authors' style of writing, and their examples are actually practical. I also am digging the shape of the book. It's short and wide and stays open by itself. If you are serious about flash than I highly recommend this book.

Fancy Picture Book with Frustrated Results.:
This is strictly my opinion, thus it is not empirically verifiable, but I found this book to be extremely disappointing! To me, it seemed as if the authors of this book wrote it the night before it was due to the editors. Until I had read a few other books on Flash 5, I thought it was me. The book takes you through a tutorial on updating a flash movie, say "megansdiary_start.swf," and your updated flash movie should come out exactly like the author's included final flash movie for that tutorial, "megansdiary_final.swf." However, there are lines of syntax that the tutorials fail to mention need to be added to the *_start.swf in order for it to come out like the *_final.swf. Also, what the authors tell you to input into ActionScript for your *_start.swf differs from what they have input in their *_final.swf, not only in location, but in content as well. They might make the claim that I read the book wrong, but that's only because the authors are catering to themselves as readers, not as an intermediate, or let alone a beginner in Flash 5. If I were one of those authors, I would ask for all copies to be recalled to update it in an edited version or I would ask for all copies to just be recalled giving a refund, to avoid future embarassment. I can't believe I wasted \omy money\c on this book. Oh well, it has neat pictures!