Wow! eBook
Flash Application Design Solutions: The Flash Usability Handbook
Author(s): Nick Cheung (Author), Craig Bryant (Author)
- Publisher: Apress
- Publication Date: 2 Mar. 2006
- Edition: 1st ed.
- Language: English
- Print length: 376 pages
- ISBN-10: 1590595947
- ISBN-13: 9781590595947
Book Description
Flash’s reputation has improved, due to a general increase in usability awareness, and improved software features. These days, the average Flash site can be just as usable and compact as its HTML counterparts-and better looking and more dynamic. But how do you design and develop a professional, usable, and visually appealing Flash site, that provides users with a memorable and enjoyable online experience? In Flash Design Solutions, Craig Bryant and Ka Wai Cheung show you how. This book is like the Flash version of Dan Cederholm’s popular Web Standards Solutions (ISBN 1590593812). It will support the new version of Flash, out later this year. The authors first examine the general area of usability design, showing how it applies to Flash. Then they explore the different elements of a typical Flash site: navigation menus, feedback forms, and data storage and display. The authors discuss the problems associated with each feature, and explain how to overcome these difficulties with the help of easy-to-follow tutorials. Finally, they fit all of the pieces together to form a complete, online-store application. This application features a usable, attractive front end and a well-designed code framework to run things in the background, allowing graceful maintenance and extension of the application.
Editorial Reviews
Review
From the reviews:
“This is a great book, not just in terms of the subject, which integrates usability concepts with an application framework, but in terms of clarity and organization. … The main goal is to explain how to develop complex applications with a rich and efficient user experience. … Each chapter has an introduction to the topic discussed, and then proceeds to tackle the code. … I recommend this book as a tutorial for new developers, and as a companion for experienced developers.” (Jose M. Ramirez, ACM Computing Reviews, September, 2008)
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 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 in Chicago. 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.
