Unlock the power of Flash and bring gorgeous animations to life onscreen. It's easy with Flash CS4: The Missing Manual. You'll start creating animations in the first chapter, and will learn to produce effective, well-planned visuals that get your message across. This entertaining new edition includes a complete primer on animation, a guided tour of the program's tools, lots of new illustrations, and more details on working with video. Beginners will learn to use the software in no time, and experienced Flash designers will improve their skills. Expanded and revised to cover the new version of Flash, every chapter in this book provides step-by-step tutorials to help you:

• Learn to draw objects, animate them, and integrate your own audio and video files

• Add interactivity, use special effects, learn morphing, and much more

• Check your work with the book's online example files and completed animations

• Discover new Flash toolkits and features such as Frameless Animation

• Use every timesaving aspect of Flash CS4, such as Library objects and Symbols

• Learn how to automate your drawings and animations with ActionScript 3.0

With this book, absolutely no programming is necessary to get started with Flash CS4. Flash CS4: The Missing Manual explains in jargon-free English exactly what you need to know to use Flash effectively, while avoiding common pitfalls, right from the start.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 10 Ratings

Lots of errors in this one - 2009-11-21
Reviewer Rating:
Much of the missing manual series is good. But this one has more then a few flat out errors and omissions, advice on how to use the program that is wrong. In addition it was not proofread very well. Ridiculous stuff like "See the box on page 193 for details". Well that's written on page 193 and the box isn't on that page. Yikes! The author refers to some tools with the wrong name at times, calling the Free Transform Tool the Scale Tool. Yeah ok I got what he meant, but I mean come on. Early on in the book he uses in his explanations topics which have not yet been covered. Then there's idiocy like this: Shift Drag the end of the timeline: Has no effect on property keyframes. Okay, he's talking about removing frames here and leaving a Motion Tween intact and in place. Yes this does work, but .... he just used an example wherein you'd use this action to remove frames off the end. Well if you do this and you Shift Drag back in the timeline it removes the property keyframes you've dragged over. So of course it has an effect on these frames! Then this: Clicking anywhere on the tween selects the entire tween and moves the playhead to the frame of that tween. I does select the entire tween but it doesn't move to the frame on the playhead. There's instances where he does things like giving the keyboard shortcut for one action, and the in the next sentence fails to give it for the next related action and instead says only to use the menu command. This should always be consistent.

Ok I grant you he may have been on a windows machine when he wrote this and I use a Mac. I'll further grant you he may have written this on a Beta version. But this book suffers from the person who wrote it being too familiar with the program when he's explaining it, bad proofreading and sloppy editing. The publisher should have sat some complete novices down in front of a computer with the text in hand and have them run through it. I always make notes in manuals when something isn't clear or is documented wrong and this one has lots of notes. The other books in this series, and I have 4, do not.

Excellent Resource - 2010-02-01
Reviewer Rating:
I'm familiar with the Missing Manual series from my positive experience with Dreamweaver. Flash CS4 is also an excellent resource which includes sample files that you can download from their Missing Manual site. It's an indispensable part of my reference library.

Huge Dissapointment Half a Way Through - 2010-01-20
Reviewer Rating:
INNCONSISTENT is a one word to describe the whole book. The book starts slowly, boring at times, to many unnecessary explanations. The chapter about color is the most boring place of the book. Some parts are over-explained just to boost page count. Then the surprisingly difficult chapter 13 and all chapters after are about Action Script and feel like they are ripped off from some other book . Overall I felt this part is for technically more advanced and not connected with real examples enough as it was in the first half of the book. I've waited and waited for the author to make a point why we all need it and to make a connection with the previous chapters. But instead, new material just keep piling up to the point where I just gave up. Near end the friendliness of the first part comes back just to explain non-Action Script related themes. At the end I also felt something is missing: I didn't learn how to make preloader scene, for example - this is a part of every modern flash animation. Also, un-attractive examples are offered throughout the book along with fonts that I didn't have installed on my computer.
Don't let me start about errata - terribly enough that I didn't understand pages about Action Script, but non existing demos plus huge errors in code in one place make for a bad book, even worse, it's the worst book I've ever read on Kindle (terribly formatted). At least the digital version could be error-free, don't you think? And no, I don't plan on purchasing the author's other book solely about Action Script, either.
Before this, I've read CSS - the missing manual, a book from the same publisher, that I liked very much. Just to note that I'm a graphic designer with solid knowledge in Photoshop and HTML, sadly this book didn't help me much.

The very best I have read! - 2009-12-08
Reviewer Rating:
Forget those "dummies" manuals. This Missing Manual is the third of this series I have bought. The first was Dreamweaver CS4 Missing Manual. Fantastic. I then went ahead and got the Missing Manual on Flash.

These books MOST DEFINITELY should have been in the box with the software. They are everything they say they are.

As a novice with the Adobe Design Suite software, these are better than going to the local Community College for Classes.

Worth every one of the five stars I have given it.

Beats online help - 2009-12-07
Reviewer Rating:
This is a great book to have for reference and beats having to use the online help menus in the Adobe programs.
If you want to learn how to use these programs you would be better off on getting a how-to book.

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