Steve Webster – författare

If you want to create exciting dynamic web sites that will amaze your online audience, then the Flash platform is a great way to go, with it''s many features, including powerful graphical and sound and video capabilities. To really harness the power of Flash though, you need to make use of ActionScript to provide dynamic effects, enable user interaction, and manipulate data.

ActionScript 3.0, the Flash Platform''s scripting language, offers a lot of new and powerful features. ActionScript is now a full-fledged programming language, with complete object-oriented capabilities, improved event handling, sound and video support, drawing capabilities, support for regular expressions, and much more.

Whether you are a Flash designer wishing to add to your skill set or an experienced ActionScript developer who wants to get up to speed with the latest version, you''ll find all you need to know in Foundation ActionScript 3.0 with Flash CS3 and Flex.

This book covers all the essential techniques from the ground up, allowing you to get up and running quickly and easily. Starting with the fundamentals, you''ll learn about using ActionScript objects, manipulating sound and video, and harnessing the power of regular expressions and XML.

The book concludes with two case studies to consolidate what you''ve learned and to introduce some more advanced techniques. This will give you some grounding in the new and exciting world of ActionScript 3.0 and show you how it all fits together in larger applications, allowing you to go on and build your own professional sites.

The sensible layout of the book makes it easy to find information about specific techniques. It doesn''t aim to be an exhaustive reference, but rather focuses on the essential skills that will enable you to get up and running more quickly. With this book as your guide, you''ll be creating killer Flash applications before you know it!

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.

Advanced PHP for Flash is the follow-up to the hugely popular Foundation PHP for Flash.

The main aim of this book is to extend the reader''s knowledge of using PHP and MySQL to produce dynamic content for Flash. Essentially, it picks up the baton from the first book and runs with it until there''s no more road.

The book takes the reader from being an intermediate to an advanced PHP/Flash developer, and helps them create some awesome Flash-based web applications along the way. It covers the core PHP features, as well as some exciting extras, that follow on directly from the knowledge gained in the first chapter, and show the reader how to use them in real-world applications.

This book covers:

This book is aimed squarely at those readers who want to create dynamic Flash-based web applications, and especially at those who have finished the first book and are hungry for more.

As this book is pitched at those with an intermediate knowledge of PHP (and a decent grasp of MySQL) it has the advantage of being useful to both programmers and those coming over from the first book.

This book provides the richest and most solid introduction to the exciting world of Flash applications, which are becoming increasingly popular as ways of presenting visually rich interfaces to useful data and services. Foundation Flash MX Applications supplies you with the knowledge, techniques, and skills that you need to help you plan, develop, and build Flash-based applications that you can deploy on the Web.

In true Foundation series style, this book uses step-by-step exercises and a running case study to build skills that you can then apply to any Flash application you create. The emphasis in this book is on the generic skills and approaches that are essential in this field, rather than on shallow walk-throughs of trivial projects. You''ll come away from this book with a deeper understanding of the issues (architectural, technical, process-related, design-oriented) that are key to developing successful Flash applications for the Web.

This is the only book on the market that focuses on generic, transferable skills that are taught using a case study that''ll really drive the learning home. If you want to really understand this subject, then this is the book for you. To get the most out of this book, we recommend that you already have a grasp of the Flash MX interface, as well as some ActionScript experience.

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