Macromedia Flash Art, Design and Function

The book is not what the title suggests: "Macromedia Flash; Art, Design + Function". The title should be more like: "A tribute to our own brilliance, and our web development skills." (A bit long, perhaps...)

TITLE: Macromedia Flash Art, Design and Function
PUBLISHER: McGraw-Hill
ISBN: 0072193131
PAGES: 304
AUTHOR: Mighty Assembly
Get it now from Amazon.com

The authors of this book, Mightyassembly, liked their own website so much that they have written a book about it. The book is sort of a how it really should be done-book. Don't get me wrong, it is a cool site, but hardly good enough to deserve a whole book.

Cool design, slick post-produced sketches, good links and interesting notes are the highlights of this book, but the downsides are many:

The book has a lecturing and sometimes patronising language. The authors are also "selling" the brilliance of themselves too often.

Some things are better off without the explanation. Fun details in the design and "treats" in the interface, are better of not being given away and dissected. It is like explaining a joke. I get the feeling I got back in grammar school, writing an essay on a subject, trying the hardest to appear smart and informed on a subject. A lot of this content is redundant and stretched over too many pages.

To whom is this book written?
A web design student might get stars in the eyes reading this book, but not very much else, apart from some good tips and links. A web designer might get the impression of how Mightyassembly do their jobs or at least how they wish to do their projects. A programmer would perhaps find the last chapter interesting as it explains a little bit about coding in Flash 4 and 5. An outsider wondering how the web industry goes about would perhaps find something here, but I doubt he/she would get the right impression. Most anyone would probably be better of reading other books.

I found the book boring and pretentious. Spend your money on a night out with a flash-developer instead.

 

 

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