Flash 4 Magic - Page 3

Tutorials & How it Works

Speaking of design, there should have been a second CD released with this book. One entitled, The Making of Flash 4 Magic. In all sincerity, this book should win awards for basic page layout and design! I was very impressed at the representation of the tutorials and could tell the guys who designed this book and the guys who did all the source code are true designers at heart. Now, does Magic live up to the hype in terms of content?

Definitely! All of these tutorials are well-explained. All FlashScript/Actionscript are displayed in yellow boxes so you can see how they work, and there are full color screenshots(That was one more thing I would have appreciated in Mohler's book: color. Flash 4 Magic is made by real designers so I'm sure they wouldn't print a black and white book to discuss Flash). They use a simple and easy-to-follow step system where they just outline the steps, accompanied with the screenshots and code boxes, on how to create the project.

At the end they have a page or half a page on "How it Works" that explains you what all that code actually does. And then, for every project, they include a "Modifications" section, telling you things you could attempt on your own to improve on their source code and teach yourself some more cool stuff in Flash. For example, for the first tutorial, the preloader, one of the modifications they reccomend is having the preloaded elements fly across the screen in some Flash-esque manner while they're loading up, which is a technique commonly used in Hollywood when you see computer screen loading things or downloading from the internet. This could entertain the user while the animation is loading, and hint at the things s/he can expect to see inside.