Flash Web Design Book

Macromedia's Flash technology has become the standard way of adding multimedia to Web sites without overloading them for the dial-up user. Hillman Curtis calls it motion design and this heavily designed book showcases some of the work his company has done, how the sites were put together and why he chose to create them that way. It's also about communication: universal symbols and the way that moving text and images can tell you more than a static picture on a page. There are some unusual approaches here: vectorising video to get stylised effects without huge file sizes, or deliberately blurring images so you can apply heavy JPEG compression to improve download times. The different projects cover working with all the major elements: sound, bitmaps, vector graphics, video, text, buttons, 3D, animated objects, programmable objects and scripts. Besides the very clear, detailed step-by-step instructions and tips that bear the hallmarks of experience, Curtis shares the design process he used to come up with the ideas and recommendations for other software to work with Flash (with the best way to move files back and forth between software). Curtis's explanations are useful: for example, it's better to use any sound other than percussion as a background because playback speed varies from computer to computer and it's just too hard to get the beats to synchronise with the motion on screen. There's even a chapter on a process for designers to sell ideas to clients while saving themselves work on a project, and the obligatory list of useful Web sites and books is more interesting than usual. The style of Flash Web Design is, well, rather flash. The writing is personal and casual, peppered with ellipses and sentence fragments: you do get a real feel for what he had in mind with each project and why he made particular choices. The stylised design of the pages (designer white space, big titles and coloured backgrounds) reduce the amount of actual information on each page, but certainly grab your attention. The filmstrip across the bottom of each page is useful when it gives you an idea of the flow of a Flash movie: the rest of the time it's eye candy. --Penny JanniferRead More