Book excerpt: If you are new to Flash, or an experienced Flash user, you will find this book to be exciting, informative, and offers a wealth of creative ideas and techniques for getting the most out of Flash for web creation. Learning Flash is both fun and easy. This book provides over 30 short projects and over 100 experimental ideas that cover a variety of effects and techniques such as: Melting Type, Solar Explosions, Animated Typist using ActionScript, EZ Web Games, MP3 Sound Controllers, Dynamic Photography, Fading Web Paint, Motion Trails, Score Keeping for Web Games, Collision Detection, Creating and Testing Preloaders, and Interactive Web Portfolios. There are also tutorials for using Photoshop and Illustrator with Flash and a chapter on reverse engineering interesting Flash web sites. Additionally, this text provides a straightforward introduction to ActionScript. You will enjoy exploring new Flash ideas that are presented in a short (2-8 page), easy to follow, step-by-step format. This book allows you learn, create, and publish a variety of Flash effects quickly and easily. If you have never worked with Flash you will appreciate the fact that from chapter two, you are producing web content. Rather than describing each palette and menu item, you will learn by doing. The projects were designed by a professional Flash instructor, peer reviewed, and classroom tested, to insure that they are accurate, exciting, and most importantly, easy to understand. Extensive screen shots makes it easier to learn. Short projects, means that you can gain a solid understanding of a single concept before moving onto the next . From the author "My students and I agree that the most enjoyable way to learn complex software is with short projects that provide new, interesting and creative techniques that can be used, or modified, immediately for your own web creations."