Finally, someone has written a practical book on usability with Flash. I have been waiting for a book like this.

The book begins with the basics: the history of Flash, usability benefits of Actionscript 2.0, the advantages and disadvantages of Flash over HTML and a discussion of why usability is particularly important with Flash. While I was familiar with most of this information, I think it’s important to new users of Flash to know the roots and when or when not to employ Flash versus HTML.

In Part Two, the authors expand on some practical solutions for Flash, such as a selection system and navigation menus. The concepts are explained with plenty of code samples of how to employ these solutions.

One of the most important uses of Flash is loading external content. This external content can include images (jpg, png, gif), video (which can be convert to FLV in Flash), audio content and other movieclips. Mastering these techniques are crucial to the development of your Flash skills. The authors do a great job of beginning with the inherent loading problems associated with HTML and how Flash provides more options and flexibility. Following the steps in this chapter, readers can create their own player. An enhancement to the book is the sample files provided on the friendsofed.com website.

Chapters 6 and 7 expose the reader to the world of a shopping cart. As we all know, shopping carts and the experience provided to the users of shopping carts are important when considering an ecommerce website’s overall usability. These chapters discuss the UI and using the data filtering classes within Flash.

No website can be complete without a usable, efficient form. Chapter 8 tackles this subject from the validation of the data on the form through creating a better workflow and experience for the user.

Chapter 9 goes along with chapter 5. In chapter 9, reader are introduced to state management and storage. An important concept especially when creating for deliverables like elearning, is the ability to enable the Flash application to store states. For example, you are interacting with an elearning application created in Flash. You have progressed up to unit 9 and have to stop for the day. Ideally, you want to begin where you stopped. The application provides a bookmark feature which enables you to immediately return to where you stopped. This bookmark feature is an example of state management using the local shared object.

Chapters 10-11 discuss topics like providing help for your users in the form of help tips (using the HelpTipManager class) and enabling the use of browser history. Chapter 12 explores the advantages and pitfalls of developing liquid layouts with CSS.

Part Three is where the rubber meets the road. Chapter 14 delves into the actual planning process involved when planning for usability in the Flash website or application. Rich Internet Applications are also discussed. Readers learn about application maps and the process of mapping user interactions to an interaction maps to help guide the development of the project. Also in this chapter the usability process and its various phases are explained.

The final chapter in the book is dedicated to the bookstore application. This is a mock website to simulate a bookstore. In this website, practical usability techniques have been employed. To quote the book "the purpose of this application is to make the experience of browsing and potentially purchasing books an efficient and enjoyable process."

In summary, this is definitely a "must have" for the Flash designer or developer. There are several books out there which teach about the functionality of the application design. However, the authors did a great job in bringing this information to the reader in a form that can be immediately applied to their Flash applications.