September 08th 2001 | Jarle Dahl Bergersen

Generator & Flash demystified

Title: Generator & Flash Demystified Publisher: Macromedia Press / Peachpit Press ISBN: 0-201-72584-3 Pages: 455 CD: Demos, tools, tutorials, documentation and templates Author(s): Mike Chambers, Phillip M. Torrone, Christopher I. Wiggins Get it now from Amazon.com

Putting together the head of community relations at Macromedia, the Flash community's very own Inspector Gadget and the designer of the very first Generator-driven online bank was not the most stupid thing Macromedia Press have ever done, in fact - it could be claimed that it must be one of the best combinations ever dreamed up for a book team.

Mike Chambers runs one of the very few Generator resource sites around - markme.com. Mike is responsible for community relations at Macromedia, and has been very active in expanding Generator's functionality through the Generator SDK and as an author of Generator Objects.

Phillip Torrone runs the Pocket PC/Gadget/Flash site Flashenabled.com and have been one of the people pushing Flash onto an ever increasing number of devices. He is probably the most updated gadgeter around, with his scooped up scooter and car, wired for everything you could imagine and then some.

Christopher L. Wiggins was the designer of the first ever Generator-driven online bank, and works together with Phillip Torrone at Fallon Worldwide.

He is a user interface designer with experience in development of highly intuitive Web applications.

With such a capable team it would have been sad if the book turned out to be crap. Luckily, the combination was just right.

The book is very hands on in its approach, it is immediately crystal clear that it has been written by three guys that work with Generator and dynamic Flash content every day, and have experience in all the ways things could go wrong, and how to avoid making the big mistakes.

Generator & Flash Demystified centers on the Macromedia products, but also take a look at the competing products available. All the examples in the book are based on Macromedia products, which shouldn't be suprising concidering the publisher is Macromedia Press.

The book takes you through all aspects of Macromedia Generator, from installation to making templates, using datasources, integrating Generator with middleware, using Generator for online and offline processing, caching of the finished files, using Generator to making content available on multiple platforms.

A whole chapter is dedicated to mobile devices, and how to make your Flash content work the best on them, with tips on how Macromedia Generator can help you make that work for you.

There is also quite a lot of information about how to use Generator together with Quicktime to customize video-clips. Unfortunately the book did not accomplish to have updated information about Quicktime 5 and its support for Flash 4, and only covers Quicktime 4 and Flash 3 that is supported there.

This is a book for anyone that use Macromedia Generator or its clone JGenerator (very similar free alternative, with support for the standard Macromedia Object, but without support for the other objects available for Macromedia Generator). The book does not go into detail about JGenerator, but most of what the book covers can also be applied to JGenerator.

While the book includes some code examples on middleware integration with Generator, it do presume that you have knowledge of these languages from before.

The hands on approach of the book, together with a good index and appendix, makes this a book you will want to use again and again for easy reference to the workings of Macromedia Flash.

If you are interested in Generator and dynamic content generation, I highly recommend a visit to Markme.com for updates on what is going on with Generator, with new objects available, and tutorials and tips. Mike Chambers have also an updated collection of links to other Generator resource sites.