The opening chapter, "A Flash Snapshot," is an excellent overview of the technology and new and changed features in version 4, while subsequent chapters introduce the Flash toolset and basic drawing techniques. Animation and interactivity are covered in chapters 6 ("Basic Animation") through 9 ("Automating Flash with ActionScript").

A particularly important aspect of Flash--using it to interact and communicate with other programs (and what file formats it can create)--is discussed in chapter 12. The little used, but powerful, feature of adding a Flash layer to a QuickTime 4 movie is also explained here. If you haven't yet investigated this feature, it's worth checking out. By adding a Flash layer, the user has DVD-like menu control over the playback of the QuickTime movie--an ideal feature for adding tables of content or chapter headings for training CDs, for example. This chapter also discusses how to use forms to gather information from the user, and how to send that data to other applications or URLs.