New Masters of Flash: The 2002 Annual Book

The great thing about New Masters of Flash: The 2002 Annual is that whether you have never heard of Flash or have spent the better part of your adult life coding ActionScript, it is likely to be one of the most useful, inspiring and thought-provoking books on Web design you'll read this year. The Annual closely follows the style of the original New Masters of Flash . Designers of some of the most innovative Flash work on the Web talk about what influences them, how they came to be working on the Flash projects that gained them recognition and where they think it's all going. Then they move on to the technical stuff--revealing exactly how one of their projects is put together. This is a lot more useful than a tutorial because not only are these real-world examples, but cutting edge, original design that will define what's cool on Flash sites for the next six months--a long time in Web years. Introductions by Jonathan Gay, the developer of Flash's predecessor FutureSplash Animator, and Yugo Nakamura, set the tone for the whole book which is as much about the potential for Flash as it is a window into current techniques. Highlights include Samuel Wan's pollen movie, Brian Limond's Time (www.limmy.com), Mickey Stretton's time-based interface (www.stopfresh.com) and Marc Stricklin's seriously weird "freak on a leash" (www.brittle-bones.com). The all-important CD contains all the book's projects in a flash tutorial presentation complete with FLA files, interviews and the finished demos. --Ken McMahonRead More