Flash 8 Essentials – Review

Flash 8 Essentials by Friends of ED

It’s kind of tough to review a book like this, as it is not particularly the type of book I would purchase and read on my own. I’m more of the dive-into-the-help-docs-and-try-everything kind of guy, at least when it comes to Flash. Then again, I spend almost every waking moment using Flash, and when I’m asleep I’m dreaming of it. (Well, it’s not that bad, but close.)

As with most FoED books, it is far from a dry reference manual, exhaustively describing each feature in boring detail. Rather, it is a colorful book chock full of real world examples.

One thing I do like about it is that the examples are short and to the point, each demonstrating a concrete use of a specific feature. One thing that bugs me in books is when you get a whole chapter, or even whole book centered around building a single application or game. I guess some people might learn well that way. Me, I like a single example that can stand on its own and teach me about a single concept. I don’t want to have to build an entire game just to figure out a couple of api methods. So anyway, this book is good like that.

And, as with most Friends of ED books, it’s hard not to just flip through it, look at the illustrations and not get inspired. “Wow, he did that with BitmapData? How did he do that? Let me try it.”

As its name suggests, it is a compilation of all the new exciting things in Flash 8. If you are one of those people who were dissapointed with Flash 8, or you have just gotten used to it after using it every day like myself, flip through this book and try to imagine doing just about any of the examples in Flash MX 2004. It definitely makes you realize just how much we got in this version.

And if you are just starting out in Flash 8, or thinking about it, this would probably be an excellent book to get a taste of all the stuff that is possible in it.