Useful Books and Software

This is a tutorial-based book and fairly text-heavy. You'll get the most out of it if you can invest the time to follow along step by step in front of your computer, either using the files provided on the CD-ROM or generating new artwork yourself. The author has a gentle, friendly style that's encouraging and supportive. The introduction to the chapter on Flash by noted Flash expert Hillman Curtis only amounts to three pages of advice, but it's also very encouraging to newbies.

The book's level is set, roughly, at intermediate to advanced, but this needs to be clarified: If you call yourself "advanced," this will all be familiar territory (no advanced user needs to see how Bézier curve handles work). On the other hand, if you're a designer who is experienced in other graphics applications, but a rank beginner with any of these Macromedia products, you'll probably be able to follow along just fine. The bulk of the audience will be users who feel they haven't yet maximized their integration of Flash, Fireworks, Freehand, and Dreamweaver, as well as those who've lagged behind in taking the leap into ActionScripting. (Isn't that most of us?) You won't become an ActionScripting pro, but you will pick up some of the fundamentals.

A nice bonus: the CD-ROM contains 20 QuickTime movies demonstrating key steps in several projects. --Angelynn Grant

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Average Rating: 5.0
Number of Reviews: 2

The book is divided into three sections - one for each of the programs - and projects from one program are used in the other programs. There's just enough difference between the program interfaces to confuse you, but Ms. Evans has done an excellent job in clarifying them.

I especially enjoyed the rotating fishing lure exersize in the Flash section. I've wanted to do that effect for a long time, and her explanation got me through quickly and easily.

All in all, the book really will help you if you are putting up a website and haven't done a lot of graphic work before. The integration of these three programs is important, and the author did an excellent job in teaching. I recommend it heartily!

The Fireworks section is quite extensive since all the examples rightfully are designed in or a major part of them are designed in Fireworks where they are then cut up, interactivity added (except for the Flash examples) and then exported.

The FreeHand section deals with primarily the tools that differ from Fireworks and things like perspecive, contour blends and bleneding. The blending feature allows you to do a shape tween type of effect and then use it in Fireworks for animation. Then there is extensive tips and tricks for preparing FreeHand files for use in Flash.

The Flash section is great fun and extremely useful. The entire section deals with ActionScripting projects, the author doesn't try to teach you Flash but useful ways to use it in conjunction to the other two programs. The projects such as the puzzle teaches more than it may appear on the surface. Sure, you may not need a puzzle, but it was a great way to demonstrate how to load movies that replace prior ones versus loading movies to a new level. This is just one example. There is also a jukebox that has four pieces of music (included) that uses a trick to load very quickly. A product display that rotates a full 360 degrees, a banner ad that allows you to print a brochure from within Flash and a banner ad that uses the color feature of Flash. There are more projects in this section.

Even though Dreamweaver isn't in the title of this book, it wasn't left out of the mix. There is an Appendix which takes an entire Fireworks design and places the images in DW and adds the behaviors, CSS Style Sheets in DW. There is also a section on adding FW pop-up menus in DW.

There are some great contributors that added value to this book as well. What I liked is they added VALUE not just their names. For instance, Hillman Curtis did a nice introductory piece on, "Motion is the Message" imparting some of his wisdom to us. There is also an entire interface given to us from Eyeland Studio that we can use and modify (with instructions on how)and banner ads from Figleaf Software.

All in all, I don't think you'll be disapointed in this book. I walked away with much more than I expected. This review took much longer to do than anticipated because the book is almost 500 pages (480) and is packed. Not only did I learn the strong points of each program but how to work more efficiently as well.