We all know that the most professional looking film sites on the planet use Flash very heavily. Even though many of us understand the basics of the program, the depth its capable of is amazing and far beyond most of our grasp. Enter the good folks at Total Training with Total Training for Macromedia Flash Professional 8.
Led by veteran Flash instructor, John Ulliman, Total Training for Macromedia Flash Professional delves into everything from motion tweening animations to scripting interactive content to publishing interactive movies. While all users will find at least a few extra things to pick up in this training, it’s definitely designed to help those from a beginner to intermediate Flash level.
For the most part, the Quicktime-based interface is well-honed from Total Training. The main playback software is installed on the computer, giving the program added abilities to bookmark favorite lessons and pull up an easy to navigate chapter list. The actual playback of the lessons is then accomplished directly from the DVDs, which allows you to not have to download the entire video contents of the DVDs onto your hard drive. Additionally, the discs included downloaded files that you will use to create your websites, which can be downloaded at the same time as the main installation of the series, for extreme ease of use.
As I may have mentioned in some of my other Total Training reviews, there are some key features missing from the Total Training interface. For example, you can’t resize your screen to any size you want. You must instead size it to full screen, 100%, or 50%. While these options may seem like a lot, they were insufficient in many monitor sizes if you want to run the training and work on the program at the same time. This is even more of an issue because the program has no option for keeping the training screen on top.
With that said, let’s break down the specifics of Total Training for Macromedia Flash Professional 8.
Understandability
Possibly one of the most easy to understand and follow trainers, John Ulliman has a unique way of presenting very complex ideas that doesn’t become overwhelming or confusing. One thing that he does from time to time to help with understandability is to show the wrong ways of doing things and act out the frustration most people would feel, before moving on to the correct way of doing things. This helps you not feel stupid for your own confusion and really makes John feel like a down to earth guy.
Depth of Information
Boasting an incredible 24 hours of training, John Ulliman takes you from basic graphics in Flash to advanced Navigation systems and multimedia scripted games. He covers a lot of the new features of Flash 8, like the new filter and blend modes that give Flash 8 a lot of extra Photoshop-like functionality. Unfortunately, there isn’t a separate category for just the new features of Flash 8, which would have been a nice touch for folks wanting to brush up on it.
Besides the animation, video playback controls, and interactive menus that most people think of with Flash, John even shows you how to create submittable forms with it that use action scripting rather than Perl scripting. (Finally, a way to submit forms that doesn’t require a someone who can do Perl or CGI!) The only thing it doesn’t at least touch on is creating Flash games, due to the simple complexity of these interactive programs.
