Bruce Von Stiers

The cover of a new book by the Que Corporation has a pretty hefty claim. It says that this will be “the only Flash MX Book you need.” The title of the book is Special Edition Using Macromedia Flash MX. It was written by Michael Hurwicz and Laura McCabe. I decided to take a peek at this book and find out just what is so special about it.

The book has 726 pages and comes with a companion CD. It has six parts along with an Appendix and an Index. There are 29 chapters in the book, supposedly covering every area of the Flash MX program. It also has in Introduction to tell you who will benefit from the book and how it is laid out.

The first Part in the book is Flash Environment and Tools. This part has 5 chapters in it. The second part is Animation and Sound. It also has 5 chapters in it. The other pars in the book have at least 2 chapters in them.

The first chapter tells you what is new to this version of the Flash program. It also tells a little about what Flash is and what it can do. The second chapter gives you a guided tour of the different program elements that you will be using on a continuing basis. You will learn about keyframes and how to customize a keyboard shortcut.

The third chapter has you going through the different drawing tools that the program has to offer. Learn about the straightening and smoothing of drawn lines. Find out how cool gradient fills can be. You will learn how to trace bitmaps to covert to vector graphics. It is explained that this is a better way to go as a vector graphic “reduces file size when you perform this operation...” And what Flash movie doesn’t have some kind of text in it. Chapter 5 shows the way to add text and explains about things like Dynamic Text.

The book has a whole bunch of screenshots and illustrations to help convey the message from the text. Some of these are very helpful, especially the illustration of onion skinning in the chapter on Tweening.

Each chapter has a section on troubleshooting. The section will have a brief scenario or question. There will be a brief one or two paragraph answer to help you out. The chapter on interactions has a question about the options available. The answer is brief and to the point.

If you don’t know about the coding that is done in Flash, the book will soon let you know about it. Beginning with the third part of the book, you get a feel for the scripting language that drives the more advanced functions of a Flash movie. The chapters in this part cover things like using operators, working with data, sequencing events in a Flash movie and managing variables. The fourth part of the book offers up a bunch of advanced ActionScript coding.

Chapter 25 shows you how to use the program’s Debugger. You will learn how to avoid some of the more common problems and how to step through the debugging process.

You will also learn how to print out a Flash movie and how to export it to things like web pages and stand alone applications.

The CD that comes with the book has trial versions of 10 different programs that go along with Flash MX. There are a couple that make your Flash movie into a screensaver and one that converts text into something special. The CD also has examples from 11 chapters in the book. And there are links to support information on the Internet.

Does this book live up to its claim? I’m not sure. It sure does have a lot of information about the Flash MX program. Does it have everything in it that you will ever need to use the program? Probably not. You will always have a question come up that isn’t covered in one of these types of books. But the authors have thrown a bunch of things together in one volume so that it can be used as a single source for learning Flash MX. I’m not sure that I would have used such a bold claim, but I’ve never written a tech book either.

Special Edition Using Flash MX can be found at WaldenBooks and Barnes and Noble. You can also order it online from Que at www.quepublishing.com. The list price for the book is $ 44.99 U.S.