Review: The Flash Anthology · 305 words posted 09/27/2004 06:17 PM
After two years and several paid projects, I still feel like a newcomer to the Flash community. It’s easy to forget that the Flash work I do—extending web applications with data-centric Flash littleware—is a small subset of the skills traditionally emphasized by Macromedia, especially prior to the introduction of MX 2004: animation, sound, and text effects. My first reaction when I see a cool effect is “how did they do that?”
The Flash Anthology: Cool Effects & Practical ActionScript, by Steven Grosvenor, fits the bill nicely. (Disclosure: two years ago I was one of the technical reviewers on a Lisa Lopuck title to which Mr. Grosvenor contributed). The Flash anthology is published in a “cookbook” format and divided into task based chapters covering the basics of Flash.
For example, the chapter on animation includes a tutorial on using random movement to create subtle effects. One of the book’s strongest chapters is “Video Effects,” which includes an incredible video wall tutorial, as well as a hand-rolled scrubber and strategies for isolating moving elements to reduce the overall size of a video clip.
Two minor complaints: first, some of the examples run slowly on my G3 iBook. Granted, my laptop isn’t a workhorse, but it’s only two years old. And second—as with so many other publishers recently—SitePoint has printed the book in relatively low contrast gray scale, but still charges $39.95. That’s a hard decision to defend in a book dedicated to visual effects. (I’ll devote a separate article next week to the printing decisions publishers are increasingly making).
Other than that, The Flash Anthology from sitepoint is a solid title, and worth a look, especially for Flash programmers who would like to extend their skills to animation and video. If you can code XML.sendAndLoad() in your sleep but fear the Timeline, this might be the title for you.
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1. On Sep 28, 06:54 AM Steven Grosvenor said:
Mark,
Thanks for the nice review, glad you enjoyed the book! #