Teach Yourself Visually Flash MX 2004

Teach Yourself Visually Flash MX 2004 reviewed by MC Rebbe The Rapping Rabbi in The Technofile“Are you a visual learner? Do you prefer instructions that show you how to do something and skip the long winded explanations? If so then this book is for you,” claim the publishers…and as it turns out, they are right…not that I have an objection to long winded explanations…after all…I am a rabbi…long winded explanations are part of my religion…though not a part of The Technofile…but if you like me are sick of having to read hundreds of pages of text every time you want to learn how to use a new application, then this book is definitely the answer.

Each of its 300 pages combines a clear, full colour screenshot, with simple illustrations and no more than 2-3 short pars of text. Admittedly, I was a little sceptical when I first saw some of the blocky, ‘Ladybird books’ style illustrations (which brought back fond memories of fun with dick and Jane…though that’s another story…), but my dumbing down fears quickly evaporated as this book’s 13 chapters took me from Flash Fundamentals through to distributing a finished movie, via shapes and objects, text, interactive buttons, layers, creating animation, symbols and instances, tweening, working with imported graphics, sound, and flash actions.

There were points at which I would have liked a little extra detail…usually at the end of chapters, some of which, having explained a topic, left complex settings and options unexplored, but given that it’s only 300 hundred pages long and contains very little text, it’s amazing just how comprehensive this book is…apparently a picture really is worth a thousand words. Clear, concise and easy to read, it’ll have you familiar with Flash in a weekend, which is no mean feat…and once you’re up and running, if you need to gen up on the finer points, there’s always the Flash MX 2004 Bible…

Teach Yourself Visually Flash MX 2004 reviewed by MC Rebbe The Rapping Rabbi in The Technofile

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