Ships from: Fort Worth, TX
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Ships from: Fort Worth, TX
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Ships from: Baltimore, MD
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Anonymous
Posted June 5, 2000
As a novice Flash user, this has been the perfect companion to the manual for me. The authors set out to make the book relevant to the widest audience, and with numerous tutorial examples and a whole chapter on 'other web sources', I think they've succeeded. I've purchased a couple of other Flash books while I'm learning, but this is by far the most understandable, and in my opinion the most comprehensive. A hearty Thanks to the authors for this worthwhile undertaking!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted June 2, 2000
I bought this book without any prior knowledge of Flash. It did help me to grasp some of the basics of tweening and other types of animation from scratch. There are a lot of examples to work with in the book; however, in some of the ways that this book teaches, its leaves the learner stuck with a few 'what if' questions that leave the learner hanging. Don't get me wrong, this book is good. But labeled as a 'Bible' is not an accurate title for this book. It isn't '100% comprehensive' as it says on the book cover. For those wanting to learn advanced techniques required to make dynamic flash sites (such as 100% flash sites), this book won't cover aspects of that in detail. The chapters of tell targets and loading movies is very vague. It gives you an 'expert tutorial' on those concepts, but doesn't really explain the foundations of how tell targets and loading/unloading movies works. For those looking into Flash as beginners, this book is a good start. It will help you get your foot in the door. However, don't expect this book to be a long-term reference manual for more advanced techniques. Flash 4 Bible is good, but not great.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted June 1, 2000
The Flash 4 Bible bills it's self as '100% comprehensive, authoritative, what you need'. Well, 100% is a lofty goal, the book is more like 99% comprehensive! Every Flash developer from beginner to advanced will find this book a must have. Have you ever used the manual included with the Flash software and found yourself scratching you're head? Well not with this book, the writing and lessons are clear and concise. As a professional Flash developer this book is permanently on my bookshelf and is my first 'go to' reference. Thank you, Robert Reinhart and Jon Warren Lentz for writing The Flash 4 Bible.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted April 12, 2000
I was pleasantly suprised by the expertise put into the Flash Bible. It has taken a tremendous amount of mystery out of Flash. Though I had read the Flash User Guide (a big joke), I forced myself to read the Flash Bible from the very beginning (rather than skip around) and was amazed at how many little things I had missed. The authors' inclusion of various alternate sources makes this a very dedicated and unselfish piece of educational material--a true 'Bible'. I am currently laying the ground works for my own website where I plan to post my movies and resume (yes, I do hope to make some money at this some day). This book helped me a great deal was money well spent.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted April 3, 2000
The flash bible is by far the most informative, and well written manual in the arena of flash self-help books today (and i should know having read four of them to date). personally i wish i had read this one first.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted April 12, 2000
Flash 4 Bible is the most complete of all the Flash books in print. It covers everything, and it covers features in more depth than the other books. I have read them all. If your looking for a reference book for Flash. BUY THIS ONE. Its encyclopedic approach gets you the information you need at a glance.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted March 21, 2000
The ULTIMATE REFERENCE to Flash 4 Reviewer: Chriss Hoffman from San Diego, CA USA March 13, 2000 I bought this book and must say I am impressed with the depth of it. I find it much more intuitive than the manual which comes with Flash4. There are not ton's of 'neato' examples but Bibles aren't supposed to have them, what you get is straight forward clear and concise explanations of every one of the numerous Flash tools and actions. Jon and Robert have a winner in this book! For the 'neato' tutorial check out Flash Magic by D.J. Emberton and J.S. Hamlin, but for a complete reference to the power of Flash4 this is the ONLY book to have!
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted March 18, 2000
Flash Bible is not just a book about Flash 4, but IS the book on Flash 4. Keeping pace with internet industry is tough enough if your a web designer, but if your a writer for software then your job is even tougher. The Great thing about the Flash Bible 4 is that it explains the things quickstart guides and internet help sites leave off (which are usually some important details). For the Beginner, you can walk away after reading the material knowing that you can work Flash 4 the way you want to. For the more advanced user, not only is it a worthy reference material, but you won't find more information on action scripting and advanced ideas anywhere else (including the web). A must have for any user level.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
More About This Textbook
Overview
What People Are Saying
Robert Reinhardt
From the Author:The most comprehensive and exhaustive Flash 4 reference. About a year ago, when we started this project, we went to the bookstores looking for anything on Flash. Back then, Flash books weren't readily available. So we went online and ordered both books that were in print at the time. To our dismay, we found that neither of them afforded much of an alternative to the manual that ships with the program. We wrote this book because we couldn't find a book that does the program justice. We were encouraged to write it because so many Flash users informed us that they were 'desperate' to have this book. We believe that we have remedied the problem. We're confident that the Flash 4 Bible is the most comprehensive and exhaustive reference on Flash, as you'll see when you peruse the sample Table of Contents at the end of this statement.
This is a user-friendly, in-depth book that will serve both the web novice and the accomplished web master. The Flash 4 Bible will help you to get started on your first day with the program and will still be a valuable resource when you've attained mastery of the program. When you are looking for clues on how to integrate Flash with other programs so that you can deliver unique and compelling content in the Flash format, you'll know where to turn.
Flash isn't a simple program anymore. You can think of Flash as a multi-tasking application: it's an illustration program, an image and sound editor, an animation machine, and a scripting engine...all rolled into one. In the Flash 4 Bible, we dissect these components of Flash and explain how each component of the program works with the others.
But the Flash 4 Bible offers you somuch more than a documentation of the features of the program. It also delves into the many ways that Flash can be used in concert with other programs to create high-quality multimedia-everything from 3D animations to complex interactivity between Flash and Director movies. Since Flash is rarely used as the complete content creator for interactive presentations, we thought readers would be interested in how Flash fits into a workflow for interactive multimedia development. Furthermore, in the transition between versions 3 and 4, Flash has gone through some major changes. With the release of Flash 4, the feature set of Flash movies has been greatly expanded. Once the domain of Flash's dynamic server component, Generator, Flash movies can now communicate directly with server-side scripts and programs. Sounds can be encoded as MP3 audio, for high-quality music on the web at the smallest file sizes. Finally, the Flash interface looks and feels like other Macromedia products, with more tool options and docking windows. Third-party developers are creating applications that output to the Flash movie format, .SWF files. Flash is poised to be THE central application for generating hot, low-bandwidth, interactive content for delivery over the web. So, even if you already know Flash, we're pretty sure that this book will show you more that a thing or two about Flash and it's linkage to a broad array of other applications.
We've gone to great lengths to ensure that our lessons, examples, and explanations are based in reality (not that the web is real!). To accomplish this, we invited some of the top names in the Flash industry to lend us their tips and techniques so that you could benefit from their years of expertise. To ensure that the Flash Bible would be as technically accurate as possible, we enlisted the aid of Paul Mendigochea, Chrissy Rey , Colin Moock, Bill Turner, Justin Jamieson, and many others. Not only did these individuals double-check our work, but they also contributed tutorials to the book.
Product Details
Related Subjects
Meet the Author
Robert Reinhardt (Los Angeles, California) has developed multimedia courses for educational facilities in Canada and the United States, delivered conference seminars on web design, and also served as technical editor for several Photoshop and web books. Robert is Senior Art Director & Program Developer for the award- winning Flash site, Rampt.com. Recently, he created installation and digital art for the Warner Bros. feature film Gossip.
Jon Warren Lentz (Carlsbad, California) is a freelance artist and author. He was the lead co-author of Deconstructing Web Graphics 2. Jon is a regular columnist and reviewer for EFX Art & Design (formerly, Mac Art & Design) Magazine. Jon's images have been featured in the 1997 Graphis Poster Annual, and are available from two European stock photo agencies: AGE Fotostock and Superbild. He's also an adjunct professor at Palomar College, where he teaches Flash, Photoshop and web design.
Read an Excerpt
Simplify artwork
While Flash can do some pretty amazing things with vector shapes and animation, you don't want to overdo it-at least not if you want 28.8-modem users to see your work without too much waiting. Keep the following tips in mind while creating your Flash artwork or reviewing your final production:
- Use tweens for animations wherever possible. If you need complicated paths for objects to follow, use a motion guide layer instead of using a series of keyframes: The fewer keyframes, the better.
- Custom line types (such as dashed, dotted, ragged, and so on) take up more file space than regular solid lines. Strokes created with the Brush tool also use more memory than lines created with the Pencil tool.
- Reduce the number of points and/or lines used to create a shape. In Flash, you can use the Modify - Curves - Optimize command, which will join line segments in an object. Note that you need to ungroup any grouped lines to use this command. The Use Multiple Passes option will optimize the selection to the fullest extent possible.
- Group shapes and objects where applicable. Grouping objects enables Flash to refer to one item instead of many individual ones.
- Gradients are more complex than a solid fill for a computer processor to handle. Try to minimize the number of simultaneous gradients shown in any given frame. Gradients add about 50 more bytes to an SWF's file size than a solid color does.
- Don't use many different fonts (typefaces) or font styles (such as Oblique, Bold, Condensed, and so on) in your Flash movies. Most elegant designs use complementary typefaces that occur in the same typeface family, or use a balanced and restricted number of sans serif and serif fonts. Font characters can require a lot of file space, from 81 bytes to over 191 bytes per character. Generally, more elaborate serif fonts (such as Garamond) will take up more room per character than sans serif fonts (such as Arial). For text fields, make sure you embed only what is necessary from a font for the given field. For example, if a text field needs to use only lowercase characters of a font for a login or name field, then specify this in the Text Field Properties dialog box for that text field. Ultimately, use device fonts (sans, serif, and typewriter) whenever possible, as they do not need their outlines stored in the SWF file.
- Keep bitmap or raster images to a minimum. Flash's strength is its vectorbased technology. Animated bitmap sequences inflate your Shockwave Flash file sizes. Unless the content you are creating needs to be photo-realistic (as in a photographer's portfolio), don't use 24-bit color bitmaps.
Use symbols Anything in Flash can be turned into a symbol. When the Flash movie is exported as a SWF file, the symbol's contents are stored on the first frame that uses that symbol. Symbol instances are similar to "A HREF" tags in HTML: they link data to a given frame, rather than copying or storing it there. Once a symbol's contents are downloaded to the Flash player, it is easily available for any subsequent re-use in the Flash movie. After you've completed a Flash movie, you want to review your Flash production and perform the following optimizations:- If any element is used in more than one keyframe or scene, consider making a symbol out of it. Just about every professional Flash designer uses nested symbols: An element is drawn, made a symbol, and then used in another symbol such as a button or movie clip. Just like groups, symbol instances reduce the resource overhead in SWF files. Unlike groups, symbols need only refer to the original resource in the SWF file rather than storing a new resource for every occurrence of it. You can, however, make a grouped shape or object into a symbol.
- If you want to use the same shape in a variety of colors, make that shape a symbol and, for each instance of the symbol, use the Color Effects tab of the Instance Properties dialog box to change the color.
- The contents of a symbol are downloaded when the Flash Player encounters the first frame that uses the symbol. Given this, preload any graphics or sound intensive symbol by placing it near the front end of the first scene of the movie. Simply create a symbol instance of the symbol in the first few frames and set its visibility (via Alpha) to 0. If you using this method to preload a movie clip, set the instance's behavior to Graphic instead of Movie Clip-that way, the processor isn't trying to play an invisible movie clip in the background.
Manage the Flash LibraryBitmaps and sound files that have been imported into Flash automatically become items stored in the Flash Library. As later sections of this chapter show you, you can specify the sound quality of audio events and streams in the Export Movie or Publish Settings dialog boxes. However, these settings control the audio quality for the entire movie unless a specific encoding scheme is specified to individual sound clips in the Flash Library. Use the Library to assign specific compression methods to all imported media. For audio, Flash 4's new MP3 encoding provides the best compression to quality ratio available. Specify MP3 compression on as many sounds in the Flash Library as possible...
Table of Contents