At 237 pages to cover 100 techniques this book covers a lot of ground very quickly. Each "technique" or topic is covered in 2 or 3 pages. It aims to present the most useful skills for using Flash as opposed to being a comprehensive guide to the program. Still, It starts at the very beginning of using Flash with the basics of the interface and briefly covers virtually every aspect of the program: drawing tools, symbols and movie clips, using the timeline, masking, filters, importing artwork from other Adobe products, sound, video, basic Actionscript and components, and publishing.

As an intermediate level user of Flash my first impression was that this book doesn't cover much I didn't already know. However, I did learn things even in some of the more basic chapters. Many of the techniques also have sidebars with tips that help to demystify some of Flash's more unintuitive features or improve usability. For example, in an early topic on Setting Movie Properties, the sidebar explains the importance of filling out Title and Document fields to improve search engine indexing.

The introduction says that the book should help readers "understand how Flash 'thinks' and how it approaches tasks." With topics covering things like how to choose between using groups and symbols and between graphic symbols and movie clips, troubleshooting broken tweens, differentiating between symbol and movie timelines I would say it does do a good job of introducing the many unique concepts in Flash.

Some of the techniques are presented with instructions along the lines of tutorial exercises, but most are presented as descriptions with explanations to help readers decide between various methods and options.

There is only a bare minimum of information on the use of Actionscript. It will help beginners to add very basic interactivity and it does include topics on the use of components. But this is not a book for developers with programming expertise looking for Actionscript techniques.

I would have found this book very helpful when I was first learning Flash. For intermediate users who are fairly familiar with the design side of Flash it might be worth borrowing from a library or user group to pick up a few tips. It might also be useful to Actionscript programmers who would like to understand the design interface better.