Category: News
Flash Hacks Book Review
Flash MX 2004 creative work depends -in most of it- on tricks and mind digging. However, like other members in the Hack family, Sham Bhangal’s book (Flash Hack) has dug the minds and came up with 100 of the most interesting Flash tricks that are distinguished in a very smart way depending on their type.
In this book, found a group of the tips and tricks for beginner and professional designers and developers. Beginner designers and developers can develop their ability to create their own tricks through reading this book thoroughly, as beside describing his thoughts within each trick topic, Sham has attached at the end of each trick a Final Thoughts part as a conclusion to ensure that the reader has completely grasped his idea.
This book is written by Sham Bhangal and to find more about it you can visit the following link:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/flashhks/index.html
Reviewing Flash 8 Projects for learning Animation and Interactivity
The Flash 8 projects for learning Animation and Interactivity book is a good resource for beginner to learn animation. It takes you step by step using practice examples to teach you basic animation techniques. The title of the book show two issues the first one is learning animation and I think the writer covered this part very well for beginners. The second issue is Learning Interactivity, which is covered along with the animation. The chapter that causes confusion for me is the 13th chapter. As it talks about e-learning in Flash, which is a very big issue that can not covered in one chapter, even for beginners. I think this part needs another book to cover deeply and give the beginner a strong beginning step in the field of e-learning.
Regardless the 13th chapter I see the book focused well and this helps the beginners to grasp the idea of the animation in Flash.
Product Details:Writer: Rich Shupe & Robert Hoekman, Jr.
Book Name: Flash 8 Projects for learning Animation and Interactivity
Publisher: O’Reilly
ISBN: 0-596-10223-2
URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/flashprojects/
The Digital Video Hacks Review
The Digital Video Hacks by Joshua Paul gives you a shortcut to produce low cost movies by providing some useful tips and tools hacks for the movie production process.
With this book, you do not need studio expensive equipments to get a professional looking movie. All you need is to look around you for inexpensive tools to help getting your movie a professional look.
Joshua has organized the hacks in this book into eight chapters according to the stages of the video production process.
* The first chapter describes the most important stage to save money and produce a professional looking movie. It is the preparing stage, where you do the planning, storyboarding and organizing your work.
* The lighting related hacks that help create low cost lighting effects are introduced in the second chapter.
* The third chapter is concerning about acquiring your movie, which include hacks about how to shoot you movie and distribute it.
* The fourth chapter introduces hacks to help create high quality output when editing your movie.
* Chapter 5 shows you how to create audio that will grasp the attention of your audience’s eye and ears. This leaves a greater effect than presenting the idea to the eye only.
* Effects help deliver your message and visualizing your storyboard with interesting way that remains in the mind of your audience. So, the hacks in the sixth chapter are concerning about this interesting part of the movie production process.
* After finishing your movie, the hacks in the seventh chapter help distributing you work with variety of ways such as using the internet, cell phones and pocket pc.
* Joshua finishes his book with some general hacks that are useful in presenting your movie in chapter 8.
Many of us are interested in creating low cost movies. I think this book is good for all who want to create personal movies for memories. It is also good for web designers who want to enhance their web site design with new video media under the limited budget of the web projects. Digital Video Hacks is one of the rare books that cover this kind of video projects.
The Digital Video Hacks Review
Written By Joshua Paul
Publisher: O’Reilly
ISBN: 0596009461
Reviewing Digital Photography Pocket Guide
Do you remember when you first hold your new digital camera? Have you got this strong desire to take a professional shots for every thing around you and the people around you?
Then, you hold your camera searching for the power button!! And face the fact that you need to know your camera to be able to get your professional shots. However, many people do not know much about their digital camera and its capabilities, losing chances of great shots.
The Digital Photography Pocket Guide, O’reilly’s best selling book, leads you to know your camera starting from its components, features and software features to how to take good shots with your camera.
The first chapter introduces to you the digital camera and its features. The second chapter tells you alphabetically what every button and menu do starting from Aperture Value to Zooming.
The last chapter includes some useful tips and tricks to consider when taking your shots. And in the end of the book, Derrick Story included important indexes about your digital camera
Actually, the secret of the good shots is to consider your camera the extension of you hand that translate your eyes vision and ideas to camera shots. And the first step to achieve this is to know your camera.
This guide is a very useful for both beginners who want to get a new camera or the user that already have a digital camera but do not know much about it.
Product Details:
Digital Photography Pocket Guide
Publisher: O’reilly
ISBN: 0-596-10015-9
Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy
Reviewing Digital Photography Hacks
Digital Photography Hacks is a part of O’reilly’s hacks series, which provide tricks and solutions for different fields. This book gives you tips and tricks when dealing with your digital camera.
I read this book after reading Digital Photography Guide for the same writer, Direck. So, I found myself comparing between the two books and found the Digital Photography Hacks is an extension for the Digital Photography Guide. These tips and tricks complete your knowledge with some useful methods to create professional photos using tools and things around you.
If you know your camera well, you will find this book very useful and open your mind for new tricks to produce professional photos. However, if you were a beginner in digital photography I would prefer to start with Direck’s Digital Photography Guide.
Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy
Product Details:
Digital Photography Hacks
Publisher: O’reilly
Reviewing Developing Digital Short Films
Sherri Sheridan takes you in her book Developing Digital Short Films through a very spectacular trip in the most interesting design topics which is about films and animation production industry.
While moving through this interesting educational trip, you will find Sherri stands out with her tips, proverbs of famous people and exercises, which is the only way to fully digest the content of the book.
Reviewing Color Management
Macromedia Flash professional 8 training from the Source is a member of the training from the source series that lets you learn by example. The book is good for beginners that need to know about Flash. In the beginning, Tom Green and Jordan L. Chilcott introduce Flash interface and walk through the program features with some useful example for better understanding for the program and its features.
For sure, it is not useful if you want to go deeper and more advanced in the program, but it is still a very good start. This book is also a very useful resource for the Flash certification exam beside the study guide.
Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy
Product Details:
Macromedia Flash 8 Training from the Source
Publisher: Macromedia Press
ISBN: 0321336291
Reviewing Building Websites with Joomla
Joomla is an open-source CMS that enable you to build PHP websites. Hagen Graf’s book, Building Websites with Joomla, provides you a complete reference for Joomla CMS features and how to use these features in building dynamic websites and e-commerce web applications.
The book starts with defining the terms and concepts of Joomla to easily understand the tutorial in the book. However, the next chapters start to introduce you to Joomla beginning with the installation in chapter 2 and introducing the Joomla interface features.
The following 4th and 5th chapters show you how to customize Joomla site, menus and managing content.
Chapter 6 includes tutorial about how to install component and modules such as Banners, Contacts, Feeds, Polls and Weblinks.
While the 7th chapter concerns with Forums, Comments and Calendars, the 8th chapter talks about Image Gallery and how to Manage Documents in your site. And chapter 9 concerns with E-commerce.
After describing the content of Joomla, chapter 10 and 11 help you to create your own templates and program extensions.
The writer finishes the book with an online reference of the Mambo and Joomla resources.
Product Details:Writer: Hagen Graf
Book Name: Building Websites with Joomla
Publisher: Packt publishing
ISBN: 1904811949
URL: http://www.packtpub.com/joomla/book
Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy
Reviewing Animation and Effects with Macromedia Flash MX 2004
In her book, Animation and Effects with Macromedia Flash MX 2004, Jen DeHaan covered the animation effects techniques in Flash MX 2004.
Jen started her book with a fast introduction to Flash MX 2004, and then she moved on to the animation techniques in Flash, motion tweening, shape tweening and frame by frame animation.
Also, she did not miss to mention the animation using action script. And in the end of the book, she included useful appendixes about publishing SWF, time line effects and keyboard shortcuts.
However, this book is a good reference for intermediate designers and developers that want to get a solid background on the animation in Flash MX 2004.
Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy
Product Details:
Book title: Animation and Effects with Macromedia Flash MX 2004
Author: Jen DeHaan
Publisher: Macromedia Press
ISBN: 032130344X
Reviewing Adobe Photoshop CS2 Class Room in a Book
Are you a digital photographer, graphic designer or a professional graphic design that eager to be an Adobe Certified Expert? So, you have to read this book. Adobe Photoshop CS2 Class Room in a Book is the official training book for Adobe Systems and the official training source for the Adobe Certified Expert exam.
This book provides a how-to training guide for Adobe Photoshop CS2, and covers all the features in this magnificent program starting with the working area and program anatomy, going through the photo editing features and other program features.
Also, it covers the new features in Adobe Photoshop CS2 like smart object, vanishing point and camera RAW technique that provides enhanced capabilities for image editing for digital photographers.
Adobe Photoshop Class Room in a Book is the best practice book for all who work with Adobe Photoshop CS2, whether digital photographers or graphic designs.
Product Details:
Adobe Photoshop CS2 Class Room in a Book
Publisher: Adobe Press
ISBN: 0321321847
Reviewing Adobe Creative Suite 2 Class Room in a Book
Adobe Creative Suite 2 Class Room in a Book is part of the official training series for Adobe products. This book provides various training projects that cover different fields of the graphic design.
These fields are covered using the application included in the Adobe Creative Suite as following:
* Image editing with Adobe Photoshop CS2.
* Drawing and illustrating with Adobe Illustrator CS2.
* Page layout with Adobe InDesign CS2.
* Web design with GoLive CS2.
* Client reviews and printout with Adobe Acrobat 0.7 Professional and Adobe Reader
* File Sharing with Adobe Version Cue CS2.
* Organizing assets with Adobe Bridge.
If you got a project that needs different graphic contents such as web pages and printouts, this book will provide you a complete solution of how to implement the Adobe CS2 applications to manage and work in your project.
These series is also the official training for the Adobe Certified Expert exam.
Although this book is not a helping guide for Adobe applications, but it provides a how-to steps that complete your knowledge of the Adobe Creative Suite application with practice and training.
Product Details:
Adobe Creative Suite 2 Class Room in a Book
Publisher: Adobe Press
ISBN: 0321349822
