Multimedia Books

I recieved the book I ordered quickly and in good condition.

I ordered this book as an introduction to both Photoshop Elements and digital scrapbooking. It's just excellent. However, it's for Photoshop Elements version 3.0. I have version 4.0, so the half of the book which serves as a Photoshop Elements "how-to" did me no good. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to return it. It's a pity because this is an excellent little book.

I purchased this book to learn about Digital Scrapbooking not how to use PSE whatever..I was so disappointed in the book's content that I wish I could return it. If you know how to use PSE this book is almost worthless for scrapbooking. Although the title makes the book sound like a primer for digital scrapbooking nothing about the subject even kicks in until page 84 which is three quarters of the way through the book. Like i said DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY !!

I did not find this book to be very helpful. One turn off is that the actual layouts in the book are very primitive - not at all as nice as the stuff you see in scrapbook mags or on sites like two peas in a bucket or the digital scrapbook place.

There is very little actual instruction on *how* to do the scrapbooking.

I purchased this book thinking it would be a good primer for learning digital scrapbooking. Sadly, there are only 4 pages in the book devoted to setting up a scrapbook page & various techniques. Those 4 pages are good but not worth the purchase price. The focus of the book really is on photography and photo-editing and a lot less on scrapbooking.

I have some experience with digital recording but still consider myself a novice. I own and highly recommend the classic 1990 text on recording studios: Sound Advice, the Musician's Guide to the Recording Studio by Wayne Wadhams and have found it incredibly useful (you may have to buy it used). As for Secrets of the Digital Studio: James Maguire has a fun, hip writing style that motivates you to learn more. I have had it checked out from my public library (KCLS) and have found myself totally drawn into it. It is a good compliment to the Wadhams book and moves us toward the latest in digital technology. Maguire is very in-depth at the right times and helps to sort out priorities among the vast options available. I use a Yamaha digital workstation (AW16G) instead of a desktop computer setup. Yet I find that even though this book is geared more toward the desktop computer, there is a still a tremendous amount of info that easily translates to any type of digital recording setup. Plus, the sheer number of useful web resources sprinkled throughout the book is astounding. He is very wise to insist that an internet connection is vital to anyone involved in digital recording. Many of the resources mentioned in the book are free to use. So I am now compelled to actually buy Secrets of the Digital Studio to keep as a reference that I will undoubtedly turn back to many times while recording and mixing, as I do with the Wadhams book. After all, it is due back at the library soon...

I looked in the preview pages for this book. The first two URLs were 404s. There was a hilariously muddled attempt to explain bit depths, but the author had it mixed up with dynamic range and ended up making very little sense. He moves on to base-two integers, and, to his credit, gets his powers of two right (he can fall off a log with the best of 'em, no doubt). But then he has one of those moments of chummy idiocy so beloved of bad expository writers who think they're trying to hold the interest of readers who couldn't care less about the material: "Our illustrator didn't want to draw all 65,536 stair steps, but you get the idea". Hyuk hyuk hyuk he funny funny ha ha haaa!!1!

Listen, pal, the Good Lord put Dave Barry on this earth for a reason: If we want embarrassingly labored attempts at amateur humor, we read Dave Barry. He fills that "need". This leaves alleged technical writers free to write about their alleged subjects. Sort of a division of labor. I don't enjoy wading through a lot of giggly garbage to get to the actual information. Few of us are drawn to the legendary grace and wit of James Maguire's prose. This stuff was not first published in the New Yorker. What Maguire has (if anything) that is of interest to anybody, is knowledge of desktop recording. So give me the signal and spare me the noise. Don't give me stupid jokes, and don't ask me to spend money on utterly uninformative half-page screenshots of website "contents" pages, all of which will have changed by the time I get there. If the site even still exists.

I didn't bother going any further.

It is very easy to explain what analog signals are, by the way, and how they're approximated digitally. It takes one simple diagram and a fairly brief paragraph of text. Trying to explain it in terms suited to people too stupid to understand it is a waste of your time and theirs. There aren't enough people with IQ's below 70 to hurt book sales anyhow.

This book contains an enormous amount of material, clearly explained and well organized. It was published a few years ago, but it's as helpful to me now as it was when I bought it. I'd guess that an advanced desktop-audio engineer already knows most of what's in it. To a novice or intermediate user, though -- I'm somewhere between -- it's an excellent resource.

Maguire's book scans over the entire field of desktop recording. Where the desktop is some machine affordable to the average audiophile. He talks about the assembling of hardware and software, to make a system you'll be proud of. There is an emphasis on getting the most for your money. Cheaper and better, as one chapter's title succinctly puts it.

Throughout the book, he puts links to recommended companies. And advice about common parts, like microphones. Ideally, there is enough advice in the book for you to construct an entire recording studio in your home. And to be able to record and make a CD of your local bands.

The book concludes with a good summary of p2p issues in the music world. Something that you should be acutely aware of, if you intend to build not just a recording studio, but also to put out your own label. After all, if you're doing the former, isn't the latter always implied, at least as a possibility?

I am just getting into the home recording game and was looking for some texts to get started. This book fell woefully short of my expectations. It reads like a report written by a student the night before the report is due. There are literally hundreds of "Hot Links" with half page screen shots of the associated site scattered throughout-every other page at least. I would say that easily a third of the material in this book is these links and screen shots, and they are injected between the sections of text in such a way that it seriously impairs the flow of the material. There are some great tidbits of information and insights, but the mass of "Hot Link" filler makes it hard to recommend buying this. Just do a web search for "home recording" to get the links for free and spend your money on a better text.

Regardless how good a bargin it is, I just can not find an "installation guide" that will work after a long search in google. You may see it as a "good buy", but if you are not a super computer geek, it may just not work for you. The box looks good though.

My 25 year old will soon have a baby. I will be giving her this book. It helped my throughout her childhood. She still calls me to check symptoms and do a "mom" diagnosis.

I'm a 19 year old college student. When I was two years old my grandparents gave my parents a copy of the AMA Family Medical Guide. With two children and another on the way, they could easily see that this book would be used time and time again. I have early childhood memories of flipping through the pages of this book and looking at the pictures. I have later memories of flipping through the pages and reading about different conditions and diseases and general anatomy. And now, even though I dont have any children of my own, I still go back to this book to reference symptoms and facts that I hear about in day-to-day conversation. Symptom flow charts are excellent.
Highly recommended!

Everyone should have a medical reference book at home (especially if you have kids), and this is a good one.

There are several things that I like about the book. First, there is a "self-diagnosis" chart section in the front. If you have a bad headache, stiff neck, sick stomach, etc, you can go through the flowchart and get an idea of what might be wrong. This is not to replace a doctor's diagnosis, but it really helps me determine if I'm being overly-concerned or if I should see a doctor. I definitely use that section of the book.

There are also sections of the different systems of the body that include descriptions of diseases. A little while back I was having problems with my digestive system. It really helped to read the section on colitis and Crohn's disease to understand more about them so that when my doctor discussed them, I could better understand him.

There are also sections on First Aide, caregiving at home, selecting physicians, and even a section on terminal illness and death. Though those last few items are things we don't really want to think about, there is information about how to handle making arrangements and whatever else needs to be done.

There is also a drug dictionary in the back which can come in handy, plus a medical glossary.

Overall, I'm glad that I added this book to my library. It has an abundance of useful information about illness and medicine. I do have another medical reference guide as well, but it's not nearly this comprehensive. I think everyone should have a book like this on their shelves.

Okay, I'm not a hypochondriac, sorry. My mother purchased an earlier edition of this book, published in 1982. I had that edition until I recently ordered this one to replace it.

I should preface the rest of my review by saying that I have a definite interest in medicine, and planned to become a paramedic. I did take my EMT-B certification (Emergency Medical Techinician-Basic) a few years ago, and this book was one of my resources for studying for tests and answering homework questions. So, I have a clear INTEREST in all things medical, and really enjoy just browsing through this book.

I find that I look things up in this book at least once a week. Sometimes I'll hear the name of a disease or illness on TV and out of curiousity to know more, I'll look it up. If I have a strange symptom, I'll look that up. I am single with no children, but this book would be an invaluable first-aid resource for a family with children or for anyone taking care of a sick or elderly friend or family member.

My favorite aspects of this book are the glossary of medical terms, the very complete and easy-to-use index, and the medication section. Several times I have looked up a medication to determine if it is safe to take with other medications, or to see if side effects are normal.

I think every household should have a copy of this book. Most of the information is timeless and very informative.

I found this book an excellent resource for a composer like me. Not only does it addresses elementary issues, but takes readers into intermediate topics which are very useful for someone getting into gaming audio.

I've been working in the field of game audio on the content side for about 5 years. I got this book as I was starting out and I found it a quick, easy read that offered alot of helpful insight and pretty much everything Marks said has held true in my experience. There are people complaining here that this book doesn't offer deep technical information or insight on how to provide content or help with audio programming and that's true. Maybe the title could have been clearer - it's more an idea of what game audio is about and what it's like to work in that field. But if that's what you're looking for, it's a quite worth reading and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know how to break into the industry on the audio side.

This book contains very good and valuable information for those wanting to get into the game industry, unfortunately it was written in 2000, so most of the information is completely old for today standards, specially in this field.

This book is very well written, its easy to go through it quickly. One of the features I really like is the different interviews with game music composers asking everything from equipment to techniques to inspiration.

This book gives a detailed look into the industry, don't expect to learn how to compose from buying this book. This book is for musicians that are beginning or are already working with computer games and need to know about the industry. Sorry but there will never be books around pretending to teach you how to compose music, composing like anything else is something that you learn by doing and not by reading books. But if you are a musician already, and love computer games, then you won't regret this book.

This is a great book for those composers and sound designers wanting to break into the gaming industry. I do not understand why many people read this book hoping to find technical audio information, but this is NOT a TECHNICAL AUDIO or ENGINEERING book. This book is in the same vein as Jeff Rona's Reelworld book or Richard Davis's Complete Guide to Filmscoring.

Invaluable industry advice and at preparing your audio demo reels, and making connections. Must have for any aspiring game music composer or sound designer.

I found the book to be very informative if you are a developer of web-based training. It gave a lot of good ideas that you can copy, especially about standards and best practice. It was certainly worth the money to me.

Most of the book covering e-learning are too much based on northamerican politics and standards since that's the reality for authors but, Horton's ideas and guidelines can be applied virtually in any country. He english is very to understand, he does not use word taken from slangs, or any "strange" word.

Chapter Organization is very good, every chapter can be read as whole unit, without going backward and forward reading other chapters because ideas are completely developed within a chapter.

Horton, is my fav. author on e-learning topics.

I am a corporate trainer who seeks to convert much of his highly successful classroom-based training to the Web. This book was EXACTLY what I was looking for and met my very demanding criteria for a 'how-to' book.

It succeeds in that it:

1. Takes the reader step by step by step through all of the big-picture considerations (and several subtle but important nuances) one must undertake to create an e-learning program from scratch, or convert an existing training program to one that can work on the Web

2. Is written clearly, concisely and simply - - an absolute rarity in a world of technology handbooks that are muddled and/or require the reader to already have a Ph.D. in computer science to understand.

3. Introduced me to small and large ideas that I had not considered but that made perfectly common sense when I thought about them.

This book made me a disciple of William Horton, and gave me the confidence that if I wanted to, I could transform my classroom training to the Web yet avoid a lot of errors I would have committed had I not read this book.

This book contains a collection of web design tips which are in the main useful but not earth shattering. Where the book fell down, for me at least, was in the area of theory. It is weak here, and that can be a major problem if you want to conduct a scientific evaluation of the work using the umpteen heuristics suggested by the author. I doubt that there is enough information in the text to adequately help one frame an evaluation of a course, let alone put one together.

The book really has very little to say on instructional design methodologies. The reader is told to bear X, Y and Z in mind and then thrown a few sample scenarios (with screen shots). In many ways this is the tenor of the whole book: a vast and never ending list of do's and don'ts and qualifications to those do's and don'ts. I have to demure from the consensus among the other reviewers and adopt a minority position because quite frankly compared to other eleraning books, I found this one almost unreadable. The book is fullof particularities that are never adequately situated within a theoretical framework. It just seems like bad science to base so many recommendations on induction.

To be fair, it's good stuff in places, and frequently relevant, but can you retain it? Who wants to read a several hundred page long list of tips?

In terms of theory, balance and scientific worth a far better book, for my money, is by Alessi and Trollip.

If you are new to web-based training, stepping into a new web-based instructional design position, have been teaching or developing web-based training but suspect that there is a better way to do it, or you simply want to establish a solid foundation in building engaging online learning envrionments, this book must be on your shelf. I am a higher education instructional design consultant and I find this book to be an excellent ongoing resource. Not only is it full of specific and practical tips, but the content is organized into dozens of useful tables and charts. Chapter 6, "Activate Learning" is an especially useful chapter, providing lists of potential learning activities and explaining some of the reasons to choose one learning activity over another.

This is a book that emaphsizes matters of pedagogy and instructional design rather than the technical side of things. Among books with a similiar empahsis I place it among the top 10%.

Not bad, but I have read better. It does have a lot of good pictures of the effects they are teaching and all in all this book is not bad, there are just so many others that I feel are better. Check out The "DV Rebel Guide" by Stu something or other or "101 Digital Video hacks", both I feel are better than this.
Enjoy!

I read through the book which was very informative, form ohh so thats how and TV never really was the same after. I have also tested out good part of it and got good resuslts. I would recommend it highly

I was looking for a video book that shows methods of filming ideas. Just searching I ended up with very complex cinephotographer books that contained tons of detail but too complex for casual person like myself. Just happended to stumbled across this book and was really surprised at the clear writing style and easy to understand images. For making a simple film project with no budget I thought this was the perfect book.

If you are looking to improve your video skills or making a large student project, I would highly recommend this book. For the film student or professional these tips might be already covered in school. Many of the project require nothing special, just a standard video camera and basic editing software. This is a nice change from other books that almost require Adobe After Effects to produce a good special effect.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and will keep this in my video bag to spark any ideas I might need during filming.

There are a view techniques described in this book that might come in handy someday, but the descriptions are not particularly thorough. The bottom line: this will make a good coffee table book but don't expect to learn too much.

very practical way of showing how to do multimedia effects at minimal or no cost. Good illustrations & straight to the point. very clear bullet points under the photos, No boring bulcky paragraphs.

I recomment this book, it's Excellent.

This book talks about everything (almost), but does't really teach a lot. The writing is about boring outdated media. I think writers should learn how to make books interesting to read and teach on cool subjects - and not just to make money... all in all, I was disapointed by this one, I hope it works for you ;)

I started with Director 7 Demystified and found that after reading that book I didn't know what I was doing. So I picked this one up, and it covers many many details that the Demystified book does not. The example files that you work with are commercial quality (those Swifty examples in Demystified were some of the ugliest files I've ever seen). In summary, I want to congratulate the authors on putting this outstanding book together; the amount of effort the authors put into this book is obvious from the first chapter on. Thanks for making our lives a little easier.

How can a book on Director be more of a chore to understand than Director itself? In my Unversity program the class was instructed to buy this book as a required text. Not a single person in the class liked this book, or even got close to understanding its confusing and cryptic method for categorizing information. It became a running joke that if anyone attempted to look up a feature of Director 7 by name not only would it not be listed in the index, but thorough expeditions into the pages would invariably be fruitless. The only thing keeping the daily desire to hurl this text out the window or at the professor was the guilt for spending 50 bucks on it. Needless to say, we were spoiled with the lucidity and readability of Deke McClellend's Photoshop Bible and were led astray here. Avoid this book! The manual that came with the program for FREE was far superior.

As all other books start off, you'll start with a project and more elements are slowly added in as you go thru each chapter. Of course there's the usual side notes, explaining certain tips, concepts and more advanced features. It starts off with the basic controls, but doesn't get carried off by explaining every single one, which can be good or bad in a way.

The book goes with idea that if you know some of the controls, you can figure out the rest. After dealing with various multimedia features of Director, it finally reaches the Lingo language, but rather than explain the basic semantics, its starts quickly with functions and procedures which hopefully can be figured out later.

If being proficient in Director is what you aim to be, then this book is definitely a good buy. But if you're more into average projects with decent animations, and yet can't be bothered reading too much or knowing too much too early, then you'll be better off with the Visual Quickstart book. I found that after covering more than half the book and finally reaching the Lingo chapters, I stopped coz I felt I didn't need to know all that unless I was doing hardcore projects. Besides, its also cheaper than other books which are just as THICK.

This book is something amazing, why I am telling you that, the reason is that this book helps me to learn DIRECTOR 7 for only 4 days.A Great and easy guide tour will help you to know everything about this program.You have lots of exercises and step by step system of leaning, from the start until the end, where the final product is waiting for you...multimedia show. Good luck !

I am so thankful for the insightfulness of Mr. Aronson. I have done more conceptual video work in the past when I was a graduate student in photography. I am looking a doing another educational project and wanted to brush up on my skills. The book provides me with the knowledge I can use to feel much more confident in the upcoming project as well as exploring my own fine art projects. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in digital video.

este es un libro que explica de manera didáctica ,todos los procesos que tiene una producción audiovisual.
Muy bien ilustrado, con ejemplos que ayudan al nuevo realizador audiovisual a enfrentar sus primeras producciones de una forma segura, buscando que éste no cometa errores que luego pueden demeritar su trabajo.
La única crítica que tengo para hacer de esta obra, es que los ejemplos de montaje los realizan en programa específicos , como Final Cut, algo que de alguna manera deja sin posibilidades a aquellos que manejamos plataformas de edición diferentes.

The first half of the book is very thorough in going over the basics of film and digital video. There's also some description on some basic equipment you'll need to get off the ground.

The second half talks about basic editing in Final Cut, which I mostly skipped since I don't plan on using Final Cut. Honestly, for filmmakers who plan on using Final Cut, this would've probably made 5 stars.

Have fun and good luck on your film!

"DV Filmaking from Start to Finish" is a !!MASTERPIECE!!. It is a book I
recommend to anyone interested in Digital Video. Reading the book was like having Mr. Ian David Aronson in your room sharing with you all of his knowledge.

This book it's not a 18 chapter tutorial on learning Final Cut Pro or After Effects. It's more like traveling back in time and learning from the history of Digital Video to the present day. Aronson show's everything, from film to video, the way you should treat your camera, what you should be
prepared with; lighting, greenscreen, Hardware, white balance, DVD
authoring,
aspect ratios, you name it, including some basic tutorials on doing
edits.
He even gives you an internet address to look and confirm what he is showing
you.

If you are an advanced editor, this book is for you. This book is for to
read,
learn and keep it forever just in case you forget a detail, so you can
review it again and again. I was amazed with the things I have learned from
Mr.
Aronson. Thank you and I'll hope to read another book from him.

Jorge Raphael Valenzuela Hernández
Graphic Artist / Videographer

DV Filmmaking From Start To Finish by Ian David Aronson's will reach both amateur and professional digital video users with a basic primer on differences between digital and print mediums. Familiarity with Final Cut Pro or Adobe After Effects, the two programs used here, will aid in understanding DV applications in either PC or Mac formats, while the author's background as a teacher of digital media lends a logical progression to his tips and practical applied examples.

I have used dummies books for just about everything I need to learn about that I don't already know. They have always been found to be helpful and full of information that I would have otherwise either not understood or had no clue about.
I have been messing around with recording myself for quite some time. I recently purchased Cakewalk Sonar Producer edition for my laptop to do some home recording for a demo I am producing. I purchased the venerable Power Books on the subject, as well as used the online Help. All of which are fine for the program, but if you really want to learn what it takes to record a great sound, you need this book. It covers all the topics, in a simple, straight forward way, for an amateur musician to understand all the concepts, hardware and processes involved in getting that great sound out of your hard work. There is no frustration here trying to figure out what it all means. No lengthy babbling about what, how and why.
If your a pro, well, Dummies books certainly aren't for you unless you need a reference, however, if you just simply want to learn how to do it, this is the book for you.
With all that being said, I have already cut three songs that I previously recorded without using this book and the sound is light years ahead of my original recordings.
If you are going to school to study Sound or Sound reinforcement, then reading this book will give you a hedge in your classes.
Stop trying to do it yourself without learning the basics and get this book. It will save you a lot of frustration and time and have you produce that sound you've always been looking for!

I'm the person this book was written for. I'm a musician and when I record I'm not interested in delving into the subtle nuances of sound manipulation, I just want to play. I found this book to be a great reference, full of tips and tricks that are easy to apply. For anyone that's ever played around with live recording, the concepts are clear and the information understandable. I think it's a great reference book.

I've just started recording on my pc on a budget, this book has definitely provided some helpful tips. Since I'm recording exclusively on the pc, it has alot of information I don't need since it covers a variety of recording methods. The Dummies book for PC recording may have been a better choice for me, but I haven't read it so I can't be sure. If you're just getting started like me, I don't think this book will answer all your questions. But along with some internet browsing and some questions at your local music store, this book is useful so at least you have a basic idea of what to ask and look for.

According to my 17-year-old guitar and drum playing son, this book has lots of useful information for home recording. He's got a Tascam 8-track recording deck in the basement and has used this book to learn how to better use the Tascam. I guess I'd recommend it to anyone who does home recording. If my kid finds it useful, I'm sure you will, too. Unless you're already a home recording expert.

I have been recording a little on my Fostex MR8 and a little on my computer. I have a few audio editing programs, but was just fuddling through. I didn't know the difference between a dynamic mic and a condenser, didn't know how to properly mic a cabinet, or even which frequencies bring out the best aspects of an instrument. This book solved all of those programs. If you need detailed info on computer recording or MIDI, go elsewhere. If you want a good smattering of audio, digital, computer, and MIDI recording, this is the book for you.

Inside Flash MX by Jody Keating of Fig Leaf Software provides an advancing bell curve of information to users. Beginners to Flash will be overwhelmed with the information provided but will also discover the incredible power that is carried within Flash MX. Good at Flash programming but not necessarily a mathematics wizard? This book is for you. The intermediate and advanced users of Flash MX will find this book a valued learning tool and resource with a plethora of examples and help in the appendices.

Lets face it, if you do any programming at all, you know how the cost of reference material can add up. So I take book purchases very seriously almost fanatically and try to research like crazy before I make a purchase.

I was on the fence about this book and it took me a while before I decided to get Inside Flash MX. I'm not sorry I did. It's quite different than the majority of the other books I have concerning Flash. It goes into topics that a lot of other books don't delve into. The Drawing API for one, printing in Flash, using Named anchors, scriptable masks, Flash Remoting, and some App. Development to name a few. Some Component stuff also. This is not the book to buy to learn Actionscript. Its really not the book to learn the basics of Flash either. The book really focuses on the more "hidden" or less traveled aspects of the program. It's certainly well written and organized well. It will really help round out your flash reference library. Sometimes I am even surprised myself at how often I use it. It's neither advanced or beginner _level. I give it a 3 1/2 really because it just is.

(this review is for the first edition of the book dated June 2002)
I enjoyed reading this book, but didn't find it to be the reference I was looking for. I found the first chapters too focused on explaining differences from earlier versions of Flash: These chapters are probably excellent for users upgrading to Flash MX rather than people entirely new to Flash.

Also, the authors sometimes are a little too happy with Flash MX, which indeed had many improvements over previous versions but still was lacking in many areas that are now partially fixed in MX 2004. Although other languages are mentioned throughout the book, the authors are very positive about even minor OO improvements in Actionscript that really don't warrant such enthusiasm.

Although the authors mention different kinds of application servers, it is clear that their background is mostly with ColdFusion and ASP rather than JSP/Java (which is what we use). Some of the comments on choosing between server technologies don't sound as informed as could be and is very biased towards traditional Macromedia/Allaire-related technologies.

In all, I think the book is easily readable, offers good insight into specific features for current Flash developers, and contains some chapters with very useful techniques and knowledge for making effects, animation effects, and even emulating natural world object and their physical behavior. I wasn't looking for such information, however, as I am creating a foundation of Flash ActionScript knowledge to create forms-based business applications.

Finally, the authors do a decent job of including references to the Mac authoring platform, but the book is really focused on Windows and uses Windows screenshots exclusively.

For the overall purpose of this book, I liked "Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Advanced for Windows & Macintosh" better. It has better screenshots, a nicer format, is more platform-agnostic, and is easier to use as a reference. Chapters 4 through 22 do offer valuable information on specific subjects, however. So I recommend looking at the table of contents and determining from that whether this book is valuable for your specific purpose.

Inside Flash MX is a great book if your looking for a quick and engaging way to learn about the finer points of Flash, or simply want to brush up on your basics.

This book is so easy to understand. The language is encouraging and clear without being patronising, and Flash features that I've found confusing in the past (shared library) are made perfectly simple.
Each chapter explains the basic principles behind the topic and then goes on to explore them using practical projects. It's obvious that these projects are written by someone with a lot of experience in Flash because they are constantly dropping hints that you wouldn't otherwise know.
There is also a useful actionScript reference (if this is all you're after you will find a more thorough one elsewhere), and a handy little resource CD that contains all the source material you need for the projects, demo versions of Flash-related Software, and royalty-free sound files.

I like this book because it's fun and it inspires me to explore areas of Flash MX that I don't otherwise get the chance to dive into, while at the same teaching me solid methods for designing and developing in Flash MX.

Hands down an awesome collection of data that is extremely well laid out and well written. I use this book in all of my intermediate level Flash classes that I teach. I would recommend this book to anyone in the industry looking to further themselves in their trade.