Comments about oreilly Flash Out of the Box:

I just discovered this fabulous book, and as a new Flash student,

love the style, personality, and genuinely helpful instructions saturating every page. I finished the first chapter, and learned more from that one chapter than I learned from a whole two weeks course with a live instructor! God led me to this book!

I can't wait to complete all the exercises, and will write another review when I finish.

Robert Hoekman, Jr. you are a Godsend! Your charming personality jumps out from every page, yet you're not so "off the wall silly" as in some books that try so hard to be humorous, they forget the purpose of instructing!!! Thanks for this most appealing, inviting and truly helpful book.

Comments about oreilly Flash Out of the Box:

To say the least, it was a plesant change to have a product that truly lived up to it's claim.

Mr. Hoekman, kudos to you. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.

In a just a few hours I was able not only to create a flash, but more importantly, truly understand what I was doing.

Mr. Hoekman is the reflection of the addage:

"Feed a man to fish, feed him for a day, TEACH a man to fish, and you feed him for life".

Looking forward to more works by him and checking out prior writings.

JASPERS

Comments about oreilly Flash Out of the Box:

Robert Hoekman Jr. does a fantastic job of covering the topic of designing and working in the Flash authoring environment. His approach to the subject breaks away from the standard dry computer book style of being a brain dump of information. Robert walks you through the drawing tools and techniques in an easy to follow and often humourous fashion. The excercises presented are fairly short but teach a great deal.

I'm a programmer/analyst not so much a designer/artist, so while I've used Flash a great deal over the past number of years, I really only know it well from a programming perspective. When I was asked to be a beta reader/technical reviewer for the book I wasn't sure what to expect. I was immediately captivated by Robert's style and humour. Robert begins by assuming a limited knowledge of Flash and introduces the tools, concepts and methodologies quickly and clearly. Each chapter and excercise building upon the previous ones in a cohesive fashion. At the end of the day, the reader comes away with a solid well rounded perspective on designing with Flash.

I think this book is an excellent introduction to designing in Flash. It is not a programming manual, it does not cover every single technique available to designers and artists. What it does is introduce and familiarize the reader with the Flash IDE, tools and design concepts as well as how to get the most out of Flash from the start. If your new to Flash or new to the art/design side of Flash then this is definitely the book for you and will serve you well and as such I would highly recommend this book to you.