Foundation Flash 8 (Foundation) [Paperback]

I just finishing reading Foundation Flash 8, co-authored by Sham Bhangal and Kristian Besley. The technical reviewer was Todd Yard, a role that he has played in 11 other Friends of ED books. I was checking out Todd's company website, and was very impressed. He works for Jeremy Allaire, former CTO of Macromedia. You might recognize him as the creator of the product that made Dreamweaver so great - Allaire Homesite. I digress, back to the book review.

First of all, let me specify who this book is for: Those looking to get a handle on Flash, starting from square one. One fellow gave it a really harsh review, probably expecting it to be something along the lines of Flash 8 Essentials. That being said, Foundation Flash 8 is a very good book in its own right. Sure, the first few chapters are elementary, but considering that this text is supposed to take you from beginner to intermediate in your skill-level, it's right on target. It takes you step by step through each part of the interface, and then builds from there. By the end, you're making simple video games.

Even seasoned veterans could benefit from reading through the introductory chapters, because of some of the significant changes to the way Flash works. For instance, object drawing used to cut out shapes that overlapped each other, which was an annoyance those who were used to a different graphics program.

This was always confusing to me, being a big fan of Macromedia Adobe Fireworks, the interface of which looks very similar to Flash. Now that this has been tweaked, the two cousin programs behave more similarly. This book does a good job of pointing out things like this, that while simple, could possibly prove confusing for those already used to the previous behavior. You could say that before, Flash was in "quirks" mode, and now it's more streamlined.

One of my favorite section of the book was chapter 12, which covers sound and video optimization. Flash 8 goes leaps and bounds beyond where its MX 2004 predecessor had been. I like that fact that the authors emphasize that you should tweak, listen to, and watch your projects as you work on them. While Flash has some heavy-duty compression by default, you would do well to choose specific settings for each media file you use, as this will help you get the best sound / picture clarity, while keeping your file size as low as possible. As is the case with most things in digital / physical art, practice makes perfect.

Another thing I appreciate about this book is its emphasis on learning real code. Some of the Flash books I've read in the past tend to gloss over this as too difficult for newer users. This may be true, but it does them a disservice not to teach it. Thankfully, these guys encourage the reader to delve in further, and draw the line between beginner or expert at the point of ActionScript...

"You can use a drag-and-drop behavior. It's fast and efficient, but at the expense of reducing your understanding of the problem, and it offers a solution that addresses problems that may not be part of your particular task. It's also a 'one size fits all' solution - and how many times have you bought a one-size-fits all shirt and thought 'Mmm, fits perfectly, almost as if it was tailor-made for me?' Me neither." - Page 302

The above quote pretty much sums up the jist of all web-based design. I can't tell you how many times I've got an email or been asked in person, even by experienced visual designers: "What program do you use to make your CSS websites?" What they mean is: How can I point-and-click my way through it? The short answer is: You can't, not of you intend on learning anything. Most people are disappointed to find out I use Araneae for all of my hand-coding.

Likewise, if you want to really harness the power of dynamic animations in Flash, you need to get comfortable with ActionScript. For those of you who are familiar with JavaScript already, it shouldn't be too hard to pick up because AS syntax is modeled after JS. If you're new to both, fear not, because Flash comes in with a built-in code assistant, similar to that in Dreamweaver.

The authors start out the ActionScript chapters using the code assistant, and then gradually steer the reader towards typing out code by hand. You could think of it this way: at the beginning of the book, you're riding a tricycle, but by the end you're handling a Harley Davidson.

My advice is this: as you're reading this book, take it all with a small grain of salt. They tend to hail Flash as the final point in web evolution, and sort of treat HTML as a necessary step for embedding your SWF file. I would swing the pendelum back towards the center, treating Flash as part of a wholistic solution to the web, using the most logical solutions where appropriate. Sometimes we over-complicate things, and lose the beauty of simplicity. As long as you maintain a larger perspective, you will learn much from this book.

Being a novice designer, I learn most effectively when I have experts telling me the ins and outs of how things work in a program, explaining the logic behind a certain sequence of actions, and sharing the tips and tricks from their wealth of experiences using the program. And this is how I exactly felt embarking on the exciting exploration of the Flash world using the Foundation Flash 8 book by Sham Bhangal and Kristian Besley.

The book covers Flash 8 from its basic tools and techniques in dealing with shapes, text, colors and animations to the more advanced action/interactions and ActionScript. Rather than just prescribing step by step procedures to use the many tools and functions in Flash 8, the authors reveal what is behind the scene - from simply how terms such as "Tweening", "Onion Skins" and "Masking" came about to the underlying mechanisms of ActionScript. In addition, I found also most useful the many "rules of thumb" of using Flash that the authors share throughout the book.

The book proved to be very helpful for me as a novice Flash user to gain some solid foundational skills and a well-formed beginning understanding of how things work in Flash. The authors achieved this through their well-written explanations and illustrations, plus hands-on practices for the users, which consist of numerous mini exercises in each chapter of the book and a larger project that the users continuously build on throughout the chapters. The final few chapters also provide some nice additions including how Flash works with the Internet, principles of good design, and so on. These help put learning Flash in context and making it fit nicely in the large picture of Web design.

In the end, the five hundred plus pages of the book were fairly easy to go through, (also thanks to the light humors intermittently found in the writing). I felt more confident working with the powerful program, and I just cannot wait to roll up the sleeves and get started with some real work using Flash!

"Foundation Flash 8" by Sham Bhangal and Kristian Besley is, overall, an excellent introduction for all new Flash users, be they right-brained artists who think a line is something you draw in a picture or left-brained techies who think a line is something you write in a program.

Right-brained readers will be enthralled by the first half of the book's focuses on Flash's drawing and animating features, with exhaustive treatment of symbols, colors, tweening, and masks. There's even an excellent section on text and text animation. Left-brained readers will drool over the second half of the book, which runs from simple behaviors to intelligent actions to "intermediate" ActionScript. Somewhere in the middle, there is lots of talk about buttons -- and artists will be thrilled with all the things they learn to do to make them look pretty and programmers will be equally thrilled with all the things they learn to do to make them do neat things when pushed.

Of course, if artists didn't learn some ActionScript (or at least some basic Flash behaviors), or if programmers didn't learn animation, then there would be no point to learning Flash. Bhangal and Besley manage, in "Foundation Flash 8," to teach the full range of foundation Flash functionality to the full range of novice Flash users. While programmers might yawn a bit during the first few, graphics-intensive chapters (and, I imagine, while artists' eyes might spin somewhat during the last couple of ActionScript chapters), there's plenty in this book to keep everybody happy. Conveniently, the authors have structured the ongoing case study -- and have provided intermediate project files -- so that skipping sections or chapters is possible.

The authors make no assumptions about the level of knowledge of readers, other than that experienced Flash users are not their target audience. Everything is taught from square one (or, sometimes a bit frustratingly, from square zero). Straightforward and moderately complex topics are explained well throughout, and the more advanced scripting topics are equally well presented. One shortcoming is the less-than-stellar handling of complex, abstract graphics topics, such as advanced gradients and Bézier curves; as the authors put it on page 63, "It's easier to do than to explain!"

Friends of ED publishes what are probably the best design-oriented books in the business, and "Foundation Flash 8" certainly fits their usual high standards. The paper is thick and bright, the typography is pleasant, and the writing style is friendly -- at times bordering on plucky (page 132: "Colors, fills, and gradients are the extra paprika on the already tongue-tingling dish that is Flash"). This particular volume does suffer a bit from its two-column layout, which results in figures -- particularly screenshots -- being a bit too small for comfort, and from its one-color printing, which is not so much a problem in a book on, say, Dreamweaver or PHP but which is a significant disadvantage in a book dealing with a drawing and animation tool. (As the authors themselves acknowledge on page 132, "It's never going to be entirely satisfactory to discuss color in a book printed in black and white...")

Pluckiness and monochromicity notwithstanding, "Foundation Flash 8" does exactly what its name suggests -- it gives the reader a solid foundation in Flash 8 -- and it does it well. The book is comprehensive, accurate, clear, and well organized, and most importantly, it bears the "Friends of ED" cachet and is backed up by the best support in the business: the Friends of ED readers' forum, a lively and helpful online community frequented by authors and other experts always willing to answer question and to help solve problems. "Foundation Flash 8" is a fine choice for anyone eager to get his hands wet with Flash. I strongly recommend this book.