The New Flash Gordon (Thinking Out Loud)

Here we are at last. I think I will have to teach myself to master Flash MX 2004. As much as I hate most of those "Skip Intro" sites made in Flash, I must admit I am attracted to the application because of its possibilities to "wire" my movies (i.e. add layered interactivity). Of course, you could do that with QuickTime, and most perfectly too, but most people are apparently as allergic to Apple as I am to Macromedia or Real. So, let's join 'em and stop trying to lick 'em.

I was asked to do a bit of homework. The premise is "autodidactics".

Well, Total Training.com does not provide courses. Bummer. Lynda.com, on the other hand, does. Great. But let us try and find out, first, whether or not we need to actually follow courses from the web or from CD's. After all, I have already done some Flash projects in the past as you can see in the archives of this weblog (the "Oldsflash" and "Old Feathered Friends" posts of January 24, this year).

So let's try and learn it from a book first.

The first set of books are the preferred option. But that is just because I have appreciated other books from the Visual Quickstart Series (Livestage Pro, Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro)

Or should I follow some kind of Crash Dummies Course?

There is another set of books I could choose, from Peachpit Press.

Now the author of the second book in this series, which deals with the "advanced" part, is also the tutorial teacher for Flash MX 2004 at Lynda.com! The previews were promising.

Finally, there is, of course, the Bible. And another one.

I may want these as a reference book eventually, but I don't think they are suitable as course material.

In sum, I might still follow a course on-line or on-disc from Lynda.com but only if and when the other roads will have turned out to be too bumpy. There is even reason to assume that I have already got a lot of the basics covered from my experiences with Flash 4 and 5 a few years ago. So perhaps I should only take either Shane Rebenschied's book (Peachpit) or Russell Chun & Joe Garraffo's (Visual Quickstart Pro)? Oh, and don't tell me to buy all of the above, because that would imply READING all of them as well. I will want to limit the choices. So there you are, the new Flash Gordon (an old fart with a talent for youthful learning) is asking for the opinion of his small but faithful audience.