The Book - It is Done!

I just finished my 15th book for Sybex Books, Inc. - a division of Wiley Books.

The book I just finished is called "Flash Professional." It's at once a study guide for those interested in taking the Rich-Media Communication using Flash Professional Adobe Certified Associate (ACA) exam, and a Flash primer.

The majority of the exercises in the book came out of the classroom - exercises my students had worked on and obtained a grade.

It was a fun book to write, compact, full-color, lots of illustrations and exercises. My tech-editor, a guy named Richard Hauck, was gracious and did not riddle me with this's and that's I should've included.

The book itself in some ways goes well beyond the ACA exam. I've taken and passed the exam, so if I, a dummy who learned Flash just a couple of years ago can pass it, nearly everyone can.
There is one glitchy little problem: Adobe recently said they had determined to drop support for the Flash Player on smart phones and pad devices--partly because Steven Jobs, in his glorious wisdom, declared the iPhone and iPad would not run Flash apps--a supremely irritating thing for most users--and partly because the demand just isn't there for it, given the HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript spec that Jobs declared could easily replace Flash.

So yes, at the end of the day, it's Job's fault that Flash isn't respected on the smaller devices.

But that in no way diminishes Flash's capabilities, or its respectability on the web. There are literally millions of sites running at least some Flash content. And while I am a realist and realize that some day in the next 10-12 years most of those Flash apps will be replaced with the HTML5, CSS3, Javascript troika, I also realize it will take those with both experience in Flash and in its replacement to accomplish the switcheroo.

It's kind of like learning COBOL in some ways, I guess. So you know an old antiquated language like COBOL. Useful? You bet! There are hundreds of millions of production lines of COBOL code in the world running most of the bigger mainframe applications that cannot, under any circumstances, go away.
Old farts that know COBOL, Natural, ADABAS, TSO/ISPF and the other screwball mainframe stuff continue to stay gainfully employed, even sought after.

So Flash is going to be around awhile. And the book--OK, I'm being modest here--is really, really good. At least I think so. I hope it gets good reviews on Amazon. Some of my previous books did not, and I understand why.

But this book's different. I have a passion for Flash, love the subject of 2D animation and rich-media, and I'm good with it. (Don't get me wrong, I was good with the other stuff, just didn't explain it as well, I guess.)

Anyway, come February, when you're out at your local Barnes & Noble, or you're shopping on Amazon for a tech book, pick up Flash Professional and see what you think, would you?