Customer Rating: 
Summary: A Great Resource!
Comment: I borrowed Flash CS3 The Missing Manual from the LA Flash club hoping that it would teach me Flash in a new and more effective way than I was used to. I have read several other Missing Manual tutorial books and have never been disappointed, so I was excited to see if the Flash Missing Manual would meet my high expectations.
The book does a good job of laying out the lessons in a way that is both logical and functional. For example one of the first topics covered is "Creating Simple Drawings", a natural lead in to the next chapter "Animating Your Drawings". While this might seem like the obvious thing to do I have encountered several other books whose lessons seem almost independent of each other and require new files to be created with every lesson. The Missing Manual builds up on each lesson leaving me with a sense of accomplishment and a series of steps that is easy to follow. In the back of the book there is also a very useful "Menu by Menu" layout of almost every Menu and command available to you. This serves as a great quick reference guide when you don't need all the extra information contained in the lessons themselves.
My only gripe with the book is the black and white images and code used throughout the book. While it is not a deal breaker, color code and images would have helped in some instances where I had to take extra time to look and figure out exactly what was going on.
Overall this is one of the best resources that I have found for learning flash, and even when I am finished reading through it it will serve as a great quick reference guide in a pinch.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Missing Manual Missed Actionscript #
Comment: I bought this book because I liked Dreamweaver CS3 the Missing Manual and thought this would be similar in terms of the way the topic was thoughtfully covered.
The first section on learning the application with regards to drawing and animation were fine. Organizing the storyboard, utilizing the various tools etc. were good and I was able to essentially create what I needed.
Now comes the real problem with this book. CS3 incorporates actionscript 3 as well as 1 and 2. Actionscript 1.0 and 2.0 are going to be around for awhile but as the world turns and so do they days of our lives - actionscript 3.0 is going to gain traction since there are things you can't do in the earlier versions and 3 is going to be more compatible with newer apps like Flex. We'll be moving toward version 3 more and more.
Chapter 9 deals with interactivity and scripting. Unfortunately they don't remind you that you should have openned your document as a actionscript 1.0-2.0 document and all of the scripting that's being done after chapter 9 is in 2.0 only.
The very beginning of the book does have you open a new doc as actionscript 2, but they don't mention that they'll be scripting ONLY in that version later on. If you skip around, you'll miss that point entirely and waste a lot of time following directions that won't function.
If you're going to use Flash CS3 and take advantage of all of its features, you'll have to script in 3.0 anyways. At least it makes more sense to head in that direction. This book seems to have had a good start, but almost seemed rushed to complete based on the authors choice to omit the basics of actionscript 3.
A better book is "Flash CS3 Professional Visual Quickstart Guide". All scripting is done in Actionscript 3.0 and they tell you so much as I mentioned that, that version is going to become standard and 1 and 2 will eventually be out.
If you need more information on actionscript you'll need another book. If you want to create buttons in Flash you'll have to use actionscript so you'll need another book which there are a lot of.
The best one that bridges the gap for a beginner is "Learning Actionscript 3.0" Blue cover - Shupe, Rosser.
Great book and I use it exclusively along with the Visual Quickstart Flash CS3 book to clear the confussion.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great for Beginners
Comment: This book is geared towards those who have never used Flash. If you are familiar with any other version of Flash, this manual will just tell you what you already know. This manual doesn't go into AS3 or anything complicated. As a 5-year Flash veteran. this manual wasn't really what I needed, but great for an intro-level designer!!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: OK beginners guide - lacks real Actionscript 3.0
Comment: The biggest upgrade in CS3 is the incorporation of Actionscript 3. It is beyond me why this book focus so heavily on Actionscript 2.
This is a good guide for beginning to learn Flash, but beginners should also learn to use the latest most flexible tools available. There's basic material on the timeline, drawing, creating symbols etc. These are all things Flash developers need to know.
There's not a lot of advanced stuff here. A tiny bit on video and audio and nothing on using XML with flash. Again, a good beginner's book as long as that beginner isn't going to be doing too much Actionscript programming.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Disappointment
Comment: Generally you can count on "The Missing Manual" to provide what you need to learn a software package quickly. In this case, however, I didn't get anything I needed, and a lot I didn't need.
I already own FlashCS3 Professional Advanced, the Visual Quickpro Guide, and am very happy with it. As a reference book, it's well-organized and thorough, aimed as much at the Interactive Designer as the Animator. But what it lacks are tutorials that can get me up to speed quickly on new features and shifting paradigms, in an application that has changed radically since moving from Macromedia to Adobe.
Having been very happy with the great tutorials in the Dreamweaver CS3 Missing Manual, I went ahead and purchased the Flash volume.
I should have looked more closely before I bought, instead of relying on my experience of The Missing Manual series. There is not a single tutorial in this book! It is far less thorough and sophisticated than the Dreamweaver volume, with most of the pages being devoted to very basic step-by-steps, mostly on drawing and animating tools. Less than 100 pages on adding interactivity, and not even a single chapter devoted to learning and using Action Script. Finally, there are 60-some pages on testing, debugging and publishing, which might be of limited value to me.
If you're looking for a book that will quickly get you up to pro speed on a pro application, I'd say that -- unlike the Dreamweaver CS3 Missing Manual -- this ain't it.
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