Flash for the Real World: E-Commerce Case Studies

Flash for the Real World: E-Commerce Case Studies
Steve Street | 2001-07-18 00:00:00 | Sams | 304 | Internet

This book will have case studies directed to intermediate, advanced and professional Flash developers. It is assumed that all readers are familiar with Flash and how to use its tool sets. The advanced case study will mention additional web technologies such as ASP, JavaScript and SQL Server but these technologies will not necessarily need to be fully understood by the reader. The other technologies that are used in the book will not be explained in tutorial manner, instead they are mentioned in order to show how they were used to supplement and extend the capabilities of Flash. The goal of the case studies is not to provide copy and paste code or timelines but to reveal the process to the reader so they can elevate their projects to the same.

Reviews
This is a Flash book that focuses on specific projects the author has been involved in. There are only six such projects covered. They include,
- a product demo
- an interactive holiday card
- two web sites done in Flash
- LEGO game
- Furniture.com's Room Planner

Even though the book promises source code on the CD, the Room Planner project relies heavily on ASP/database backend and they DO NOT include this code. The result is that the Flash source included for Room Planner will not work.

When someone from our firm asked the author about this he replied that his former employer owns that code and would not allow it to be published.

You can still learn from the Flash source code but its value is a whole lot less because you cannot see the application working. And, given that Furniture.com is now out of business you cannot see the application in action there either!

Our main reason for this review is to simply alert others BEFORE they buy this book about the missing source code. If this is not an issue for you this book may benefit you. In our case, we purchased the book to learn from the Room Planner source code so the book has little value to us.
Reviews
Breaking the mold of the how-to and step-by-step approach this book looks at the business side of building a succesful Flash project. It's refreshing to hear why decisions were made, because of budget limitations, difficult clients or looming deadlines. This book is an excellent read, is well written and offers a realistic look at the many challenges Flash developers face besides the technology. An excellent addition to my library!

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