by Peter Aylward, Ken Jokol, Jamie MacDonald, Paul Prudence, Glen Rhodes, Robbie Shepherd

This book takes an in-depth look at purposing your Flash skills towards developing fully functional Flash Applications. Taking its lead from the design element, each chapter takes you a step further into evolving your design skills into application development.

It will look at:

• Focusing your interface design for ease of use
• Shaping up the back end to keep things simple
• Delivering complex content, including video

Using a blend of instructional and inspirational chapters, this book looks at Flash’s strengths – graphical dynamism, interactivity, back-end punch and multimedia delivery.

• Make gorgeous sites in tiny files with the Drawing API
• Look at the marriage of data and beauty with a Flash Family Tree
• Create real-feel interfaces that mimic different media
• Make XML do the donkey-work in site structure
• Ease up you navigation with PHP
• Create an entire drawing application
• Deliver video and make it interactive with Flash

…and so much more!

by Jen deHaan and Glen Rhodes

If you’ve dabbled with Flash and want to expand your repertoire, this book will teach you what you need to know about ActionScript in a fast-paced tutorial style. The ActionScript language is becoming an increasingly vital part of every Flash designer’s toolkit, but it can seem like a scary prospect for the non-programmer. We’ll show you how easy it is to create interesting, interactive movies in Flash MX through visual metaphors and worked examples. The aim is to get you up to speed quickly, giving you the skills you need to add extra functionality and control to your Flash movies.

By the time you’re finished, you should have a good grasp of the core ActionScript concepts and techniques, and plenty of ideas for your own projects. No previous programming experience is required, just a familiarity with the Flash MX interface, and even the most code-phobic reader should find the learning curve to be smooth and easy.

by Leon Cych, Benjamin J. Mace, Glen Rhodes

Some Flash users like the depth, comfort and security of the linear tutorial approach. Others respond better to a more laid-back model. This book is for you if you’re a denizen of the latter group; it’s rich in images and examples, and restrained in its use of narrative. It gives you a fast but thorough and structured introduction that’ll get you started with Flash MX quickly.

by Glen Rhodes, Justin Everett-Church, David Doull, Igor Choromanski, Kevin Sutherland, Thomas Poeser

These days people are looking to the Internet for its gaming possibilities. Whether it’s real-time role-playing you’re after with 30,000 of your closest friends, or just a solitary round of crazy golf, the most versatile piece of web animation software just made itself more approachable for designing games!

This book takes us deep, deep down into the realms of game design, and hunts out the features that are really going to evolve your Flash skills into full-on game wizardry. We are going to discuss what makes a good game – and what makes a great game. We grapple with the concepts of 3D and how to get Flash to produce cutting-edge game environments, while keeping our sensible shoes on by reducing those file sizes and download times. We conduct a battle of wits with artificial intelligence, and have a good crash around with some collision detection in platform games. All in all we are pushing Flash to its breaking point to see what lies beyond.

Assuming you have a reasonable knowledge of Flash 5, this book will increase your skill-set and fire your imagination by offering a collection of new approaches and advanced techniques. The only thing more entertaining than playing games is creating them. Now, the only limit is your imagination. Enter the Studio and start taking fun seriously.