Learning Flash 4.0 Video Tapes
Review by Steve Shelden

Lynda Weinman has done it again. In addition to all of the best-selling web design books she has written in the past few years, Lynda has created a set of three video tapes that are really great. She has teamed up with David Baldeschwieler from Macromedia's Technical Marketing team, who was a member of the Flash Quality Assurance team through Flash 2 and Flash 3, which afforded him the opportunity to work directly with the engineers who wrote Flash.
The tapes are a great opportunity to learn Flash the easy way. You also have the usual advantage of video tapes over seminars or classes; you can pause or rewind! After just several hours of viewing and studying the tapes, I was able to create the above Flash movie. I might add that I created the round logo in Adobe Illustrator 8.0 from a scan and then imported it into Flash. I especially enjoyed watching Lynda and David working as an instuctional team; sometimes switching back and forth with solo instuction and sometimes speaking together. I would view a tape for awhile and then stop and try out my new knowledge at the computer. The video tapes come with a list of all the main categories, with counter numbers, so that you can find the various topics more easily on a tape. Each video tape runs approximately 2 hours. The following subjects are what you will find covered on each tape:

Tape 1:

• Drawing Tools & Techniques
• Type
• Timeline Animation
• Shape Tweening
• Motion Tweening
• Animation along a Path
• Shape Hinting
• Animation Trails
• Symbols
• Libraries
• Deconstructing Animation