Flash Application Design Solutions: The Flash Usability Handbook...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 352 pages
• Published by: friends of ED
• Edition: 1st Edition February 27, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1590595947
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1590595947
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 1.5 pounds

Product Description
Flash Application Design Solutions shows you how to harness the power of ActionScript 2.0 and make the most of the improved design tools of Flash 8 to create usable, intuitive Flash interfaces. In this book, you'll find a number of concrete Flash usability solutions that use elements such as navigation menus, data filtering, forms, content loaders, Flash liquid layouts, help tips, and many other features. You'll learn how each of these solutions actually improves on what is possible with HTML and JavaScript. In each case, you'll see how users interact with the website feature, and how it gives users the most intuitive, enjoyable experience possible while using your application. You'll get a step-by-step analysis of how to program and build each solution, and how to make it scalable, maintainable, and reusable. The book concludes with a case study that showcases the solutions developed in the previous chapters, all working together in a single application. This example puts all the pieces together and highlights just how, with some thought and consideration, Flash can improve usability on the Web. This book is essential reading for all Flash designers and developers, from beginners seeking valid solutions to veteran Flashers looking for a fresh perspective on application design, interaction, and reusability. You'll learn:

• Important Web usability theory
• How to build usable Flash applications
• Effective object-oriented programming using ActionScript
• How to use new Flash 8 features
• Object-oriented ActionScript programming

Summary of Contents:

• PART ONE: INTRODUCING FLASH USABILITY
  • Chapter 1: Flash: Then, Now, Later
  • Chapter 2: Setting Up Your Flash Environment
• PART TWO: THE USABILITY SOLUTIONS
  • Chapter 3: A Basic Selection System
  • Chapter 4: Navigation Menus
  • Chapter 5: Content Loading
  • Chapter 6: Inventory Views and Selection Devices
  • Chapter 7: Data Filtering
  • Chapter 8: Forms
  • Chapter 9: State Management and Storage
  • Chapter 10: Help Tips
  • Chapter 11: Browser History
  • Chapter 12: Liquid Layouts
  • Chapter 13: Embedding Flash
• PART THREE: PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER
  • Chapter 14: Planning for Usability
  • Chapter 15: The Usable Bookstore

About The Author
Ka Wai Cheung is a software architect and award-winning web designer specializing in developing usable web applications. He has a particular interest in creating rich internet experiences in Macromedia Flash and object-oriented programming theory.
Having developed over a hundred web applications for industries ranging from law to entertainment, Ka Wai is currently a lead architect at Dizpersion Technologies, a company focused on RSS content distribution. Ka Wai has written for several online publications and resource sites including Digital Web Magazine (http://www.digital-web.com), ActionScript.org (http://www.actionscript.org), and HOW design online (http://www.howdesign.com). He writes on anything from web standards and usability design to software development theory. He logs his past web projects and writings on his personal portfolio site, Project99 (http://www.project99.tv). Ka Wai has degrees in Computing and Information Systems, Mathematics, and Integrated Science from Northwestern University.
When not working on the web, Ka Wai enjoys playing guitar, eating foods from all four corners of the world, attending sporting events and soaking up the always warm Chicago sun.

Craig is a full-time Flash engineer living and working in Chicago and has been advocating the use of Flash in delivering rich internet applications to top-ranked online communications agencies around the world for the past five years with great success. Currently, Craig is a Senior Art Director at Arc Worldwide in Chicago.
From car configurators to video learning applications, Craig's devotion to Flash has driven his creative intrigue while providing him with a technical expertise and perspective that only a Flash developer can attain.
Like many other Flash developers, Craig's background is not strictly programming oriented; he has a degree in musical composition from Berklee College of Music in Boston.
When he isn't crankin' out Actionscript and his eyes aren't glued to the screen gawkin' at the spectacular work of his contemporaries, Craig is seekin' out great music, catchin' up on 20th century American fiction or awaiting a deep dish pizza being delivered to his doorstep.


Reader Reviews
Flash Application Design Solutions was recommended to me by a co-worker of mine when I started learning OOP. I currently work at Avenue A | Razorfish in the Chicago office where we create sites such as Postopia [...]. In an ironic occurrence, it turns out that Craig Bryant, one of the authors of this book, was the person who set up the original framework for the Postopia site. I've met Craig only once when he and Ka Wai made a presentation (a really cool one, at that) at the Apple store on Michigan Avenue. They definitely know what they are talking about and this book is no exception. I was eager to get started here after I had already realized the basic building blocks of OOP and wanted to get a bit more of an edge on setting up my projects. The book didn't disappoint as it gave me at least two very valuable classes that I still use to this day. The UIObject class is now the core building block of any navigation system I build and the (what I named) Broadcaster class (that is essentially the same as the EventBroadcaster in this book) is just about the best way to communicate between classes. Chapter three is a great introduction into extending basic frameworks. Each and every chapter has a great introduction on what is an issue in the work you're about to tackle. Ka Wai and Craig then tell you how these issues can be improved and finally we go on to improve the issues to see exactly how much of a difference their process makes in developing your own solutions in the future. Chapter six has a fair warning by the authors that it is a bit long winded and is relatively hard to get through unless you are going through and following the source, but it uncovers a really neat system of inventory views and selection devices. I'm normally not a huge fan of building one large application throughout a technical book, but its almost necessary to show how to extend the core and your own classes and build up the concepts from start to finish. For anyone who has already read the Object Oriented Programming for Flash 8 title and is looking for a bit more on OOP, I'd definitely recommend this book as a companion. It'll help you get through that gray phase where you're now familiar with OOP concepts but you're not familiar enough to know how to practically apply them to your own projects.