Bruce Von Stiers

Chrissy Rey doesn’t seem like a name that would be associated with a computer software self help book. But that is a false conception. Chrissy has written a powerhouse book that deals with the new version of Macromedia’s Flash software program. The title of the book is Macromedia Flash MX: Training From The Source. It was put together by Macromedia Press and released by Peachpit Press.

The book is set up as a series of lessons. There are a total of twelve lessons in the book. There is an Introduction, a four part Appendix and an Index. The book has 462 pages and comes with a CD-ROM disc that has all of the files needed to do the work for each lesson.

The Introduction tells you a little bit about how the book is organized. It also tells what you are expected to have learned by the time all of lessons have been completed.

The first lesson is Learning Flash Basics. Here you will be expected to learn how to find help when you get stuck. You create a keyboard shortcut set. You will find out how to save a Flash MX project. This lesson will show how you can modify a Flash movie’s properties.

Each lesson will have a summary at the end of it to recap the events that occurred. In case you aren’t sure that you got one part of the lesson, the page numbers for each part are listed in the summary. And throughout each lesson there are tips and notes. Chrissy has added these items for extra emphasis of an action or additional information that needs to be noted before moving forward.

The third lesson gets into the symbol library that is so useful in Flash. Here you will learn how to import bitmaps and create a symbol. The lesson will have you add an instance of a symbol to a Flash movie. The next lesson shows all about creating animation in your Flash movie. The lesson has you create a frame-by-frame animation and put together something called a motion tween.

In lesson Five, you will learn how to create a button for your Flash movie and assign an action to it. That way when someone clicks on the button, something will happen. The last part of this lesson has you assign actions to send an e-mail to someone and to open up a URL. This last part is done through ActionScript, Flash’s powerful scripting language.

Later lessons will have you building on the skills that you have obtained earlier. The ninth lesson has you putting scroll bars into a movie. The tenth lesson will have you learning how to make your Flash movie accessible so it can be printed out. Lesson 11 gets into optimizing your Flash movies and related content.

The last lesson is very important. It is called Publishing A Flash Web Site. It takes all of the skills that you were to have learned in the earlier lessons and has you go one step further. You will learn what a Preloader is and how it can save frustration of not being able to view frames of Flash movies that haven’t been downloaded yet. You will create a Preloader in this lesson. You will also learn how to publish the Flash movie and upload it to your web site.

I have yet to see one of these Training From The Source titles that didn’t provide a wealth of information about its subject matter. In the case of this one from Chrissy Rey, it has the same amount of training that a seminar would. And you don’t even have to leave your home or office to learn it. If you are considering using Flash MX, then this is a book that should be sitting next to your computer.

Macromedia Flash MX: Training From The Source can be found at bookstores like Barnes and Noble. You can also order it through Peachpit Press at www.peachpit.com