Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Hands-On Training

This is an exceptionally well written book. The seller shipped quickly and the price was very reasonable.

I am moving through this book and very much appreciate the charts for reference, the clarity in his explanations, the repetition of important distinctions, and the repetition shortcuts throughout the exercises so that by the end of the book, you really can use the shortcuts. So far, I especially appreciate the in depth explanation of blending modes, that I have never found in any of the other adobe introductory books read to date.

I've used the previous two versions of this book to teach from, as well as this one, and the amount of space devoted in this book to practical applications of Flash is very small. 2 versions back most of the exercises focused on creating a flashed based site and the last two versions get into that less and less - as a matter of fact there is hardly any content in this latest edition that would help a novice build a flash site. Several files were missing or incomplete. Some screenshots were not updated from previous editions where the exercise had changed and the screenshots themselves were very small - no one had a good time trying to read the code in them. Half the books fell apart as well. I'll be looking for another book for next time.

Todd Perkins is the worst teacher I have ever encountered. He's very good at explaining over and over everything that is obvious, and he leaves out what you need to know in order to actually do anything. It's frustrating.

This seems to be a strong resource but I honestly have not gotten that deep into.