Jerome Turner – författare

Flash MX Studio takes your raw Flash talent and multiplies its potency by focusing it on real-world web design situations. In the heady days of the late 1990s, designers were trying their hand at anything and everything they could lay their hands on. Now the marketplace is seriously focused, and serious Flash designers have to know exactly what they''re doing and why. These days, it''s all about functionality over experimentation, justification over style. It''s all about maturity. The design must fit the job specs, and this book shows the reader how to fulfill these requirements and more.

This book examines all the avenues open to professional or aspiring professional Flash MX designers. It takes a look at advanced uses of the new MX features, such as components and the Drawing API, and gives guidance on building whole new structures for animation, Dynamic Content, PHP, ColdFusion MX, XML, video, audio and audiovisual formats.

Never before has so much power been so accessible to the web designer. This book is designed to put that power in your hands.

Flash MX Studio has been broken into four sections to address the most common needs for the Flash designer. First off, Jamie McDonald provides five chapters on site presentation and the principles of web design. These opening chapters take a look at how to create slick, professional-level sites, involving Flash MX''s new drawing and motion capabilities and interactive techniques.

The second section concentrates on ActionScript. Flash''s resident coding environment is crucial to master, and taps into Flash''s great strength—intuitive and interactive applications. Keith Peters and Todd Yard have buddied up on this section, and examine some of the most advanced ActionScript techniques around. Be warned—this section is not for the faint-hearted!

Section three takes a look at Flash MX''s greatly improved visual, audio andaudiovisual capabilities. Its three chapters, written by Jez Turner and Alex White, concentrate on building a single site aimed at displaying rich media content.

The final section is devoted to expounding a few myths about dynamic content using Flash. Its four chapters talk about general practice, before focusing in on specific areas, including introductions to PHP and XML, together with a look at Macromedia''s brand new ColdFusion MX.

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX merges the faultless visual layout tools of Dreamweaver and the powerful yet easy-to-use database integration offered by UltraDev into a product that is simply the most vital piece of software any web designer can own.

Unlike many other books, Foundation Dreamweaver MX concentrates on both sides of this alliance, looking to the future. No matter what your background, this book will give you a solid foundation in graphic design and layout issues as well as a full grounding in the powerful database integration features that Dreamweaver MX offers.

The truth is that database integration is no more of an extra in today''s climate than faultless visual design, and this book is here to guide you through this new world, covering dynamic scripting with PHP and the popular MySQL database.

This book is suitable for both PC and Mac (OS X needed) platforms.

Whether a complete novice or a past user, after reading this book, youll be fluent in the full breadth of Dreamweaver MX''s powerful functionality, a unique learning curve backed up by solid real-world case studies and tutorials.

Dreamweaver MX makes this all possible, and Foundation Dreamweaver MX makes it easier than you could have imagined.

December 2002: Macromedia has released an update, available for download, which addresses a number of issues in Dreamweaver MX, including compatibity with Macromedia Contribute.