Macromedia Flash MX: A Beginner's Guide

Some people have a talent for being able to make new material easy to understand. With over 60 books under his belt, Brian Underdahl is definitely one of them. In Macromedia Flash MX: A Beginner s Guide, he writes in a friendly yet concise style that makes learning Flash MX, including the rudiments of ActionScript, as easy as putting one foot in front of the other.

The book covers the basic concepts behind Flash--learning the work environment; drawing; creating animations; using motion guides, masks, symbols, imported graphics, and sound; publishing movies; and using ActionScript. If you ve been resistant to learning the latter up until now, this book may be just the one that gets you started programming your movies with interactivity.

The book moves you along by keeping you thinking, doing, and recapping what you ve just learned. There are lots of mini-projects for hands-on learning. In fact, by page 22, you ve gotten your feet wet with a simple animation. Each of the book s 14 chapters begins with a set of goals and ends with a "Mastery Check" with which you can test your comprehension. And there are pop quizzes on almost every page. Although they may seem elementary, these tests help you learn with confidence and know when it s safe to skip ahead.

"Ask the Expert" sidebars seem to anticipate readers questions. For example, "I opened the Insert menu, and I see there is also a Blank Keyframe command. Why would I choose this command rather than the Keyframe command?" The strict answer would be "When you want to insert a frame that doesn t copy the contents of the previous keyframe." But Underdahl s answer goes one step further and lets you know that, most likely, you won t want to choose a blank keyframe because you ll probably want to manipulate the previous keyframe s contents in order to animate them.

In other words, this beginner s guide doesn t just define features and tools; it lets you know why you might need them and how they may be useful to you. A good teacher shows what s possible--and Brian Underdahl is a very good teacher. --Angelynn Grant