Macromedia Flash is the key to designing and delivering low-bandwidth animations, presentations, and Web sites. It is also a full-fledged programming API with scripting capabilities and server-side connectivity enabling the creation of engaging applications, sophisticated Web interfaces, and interactive training courses. Flash has the ability to easily integrate with, and add interactivity to, complex media types with powerful and intuitive tools. Developers can rapidly develop high performance, accessible content using pre-assembled building blocks; and they can expand their authoring capabilities with custom extensions from independent developers.
Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 Unleashed covers these high-end topics, providing a solid and complete reference for developers. The fundamentals are covered quickly in the first part of the book, while the majority of the content is devoted to the intermediate to advanced developers who need to learn about ActionScript and how Flash works with middleware, such as ColdFusion, ASP, and XML.
David Vogeleer is a Macromedia-certified Flash developer and instructor out of Richmond, Virginia. He has been working in Flash since version 4, focusing mainly on ActionScript. Currently freelancing, he also continues to speak at user groups and classes up and down the East Coast. He is also an avid poster on http://www.FlashMagazine.com as well as being coadministrator of http://www.EMLlabs.com, a Flash and dynamic content resource. And after all that, he still manages to occasionally add content to his personal site for experiments, http://www.evolutionar-e.com, and to go snowboarding.
Matthew Pizzi is the Training Director at Train Simple, a software training company specializing in multimedia products, located in Santa Monica, California. Matthew has been teaching fulltime for five years and is the author of multiple training CDs, including his "Up to Speed" series, offering computer-based training in Flash, Dreamweaver, Final Cut Pro and Photoshop. For more information on classes or training CDs, visit http://www.trainsimple.com.