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During the Flash beta phase, Macromedia give early releases of the software to designers. These designers play with the releases, see what is cool, what needs changing, and what is broken. Most of all, they get 6 months ahead of the pack in terms of learning curve.

The first edition of the Flash essentials book was a journal of my experience as a beta tester on Flash MX. My aim with the book was to put readers on the 'six months ahead' curve simply by reading a book that condensed all the new stuff into something that could be read in a couple of days.

Although a book that only looks at the new/upgraded sections of an application seems like a good idea (and why don't more publishers do it, etc), there is a very good reason why more Essentials type books are not around... this kind of book is very difficult to write. Everything is new and there is nothing you can write quickly (such as updated content from previous editions), and when you start the book it is not even clear what the contents page will look like. Although its cool for the reader that there is only new content, it takes as much time to write something like an Essentials book as it takes to write any two other books. So, lots of kudos to the authors of this book (Paul, Tink, Glen and Chris over as CRASH!MEDIA, Matt, and Todd).

So what do I think of the new edition?
There's a lot of new stuff in Flash 8, but most of it takes some digging around to find... unless you have this book. It goes through everything - all the new design tools, all the enhancements, and of course all the new ActionScript.

I really can't recommend this book enough. A must-buy for anyone even remotely involved with Flash design and development. The book is especially useful for the busy design office that needs a book full of Flash 8 design techniques, tips and walkthroughs that can be learnt quickly, and used now.