Yes, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional. I know what you’re thinking, “why even bother with Flash”? Well, back in 2008 when I bought this book Adobe Flash was all the rage and Adobe Flash CS3 had just come out. I read this book from cover to cover.
My favorite thing to do with Adobe Flash was build custom video players. The skills I earned as a programmer gave my dad, who at that time was offering custom weather data for client websites, the added bonus of offering a custom Flash video player. I would create a Flash player skin that would use the client’s logo and colors, or some would promote an event. My dad would create a cool weather-related video that would play in the custom flash player on a client’s site, and the best part, the best part was my hack….
CDATA to the rescue!

I figured out that Closed Caption text could be feed into a Flash Player using CDATA and through the manipulation of tags and some experimentation I discovered I could put timed clickable ads inside the video player! It was so cool, and the ability to have clickable links in the video gave our clients a very cool experience for their website users. Adobe Flash has since faded into existence, mostly because of security flaws and lack of mobile support. However, if you’re still in the market for some quality Adobe Flash books, check these two out:
Both are great coder sources for ActionScript 3 and Flash. Most video players and animations that where completely Flash-based have been done away with by JavaScript. Still though, I’m gonna hold onto this Flash CS3 book for a while longer, it served me well and deserves a spot on my book shelf and this website.
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