Welcome to .flashgeek. book reviews. The premise is simple: the nice folks at New Riders have offered up a bevy of titles for review, and I've offered to give my views on their merit. Why my views are more important than anyone else's is truly beyond me. However, I'll strive to provide a fair an honest evaluation of the titles under my care.

If you ever disagree with my reviews or think I've lead you down the primrose path, feel free to flame me on the .flashgeek. boards or on the pro_flash and .flashgeek. lists.

Enough with the introductions, let's get into some literature. First up...

Title	Flash deConstruction The process, design, and actionscript of Juxt Interactive
Authors	Todd Purgason, Phil Scott, Brian Drake, Bonnie Blake
Details	$45.00 U.S. $67.95 CAN £34.99 UK $31.50 from InformIT 330 pages
Value	High
Short take	Caught somewhere between the by-designers-for-designers brilliance of Hillman Curtis and the ingenuity of Moock-esque code descriptions, Flash deconstruction is the best suited for skilled Flash designers looking to move from hobby work to real agency development.

The Review
Don't judge a book by its cover. Isn't that what they say? But what's a person to do when the cover so adequately speaks to the content within? Case in point: Flash deconstruction. When you pull this book off of the shelf you know you're in for something 90 degrees off of ordinary. This is due in large part to the fact that the cover is printed 90 degrees clockwise of how you'd expect it to be printed. Therein, my friends, lies the foundation of the very book.

Yes. You get to break down Juxt projects. Yes, you get to see how they do cool stuff. And yes, you get little snippets of code that can help you along (or, that you can break and never get working again, as I do). But, is it a great Flash book? Not necessarily. It's a great design process book that happens to Flash as one of the leading elements.

Entering the book is like gaining a spectator's view on the Juxt Interactive team in action. It's a team which has not only pushed the design envelope, it's managed to stick around quite awhile doing it. Which, I might add, is no small feat, given the world of Razorfishes and Agency.coms in which we live.

But I digress. Back to the book.

The book is an experience, but not an experience with which many Flash designers may be familiar. This is neither the tinker-with-Flash-until-you-come-up-something-cool-and-try-to-sell-it-to-a-client kind of book, nor the code-snippet farm of things that can never be applied to real projects for real clients or companies. This is the experience of process. The experience of proven techniques. The experience, if you will, of experience.

Every page of the book is filled with little chunks of invaluable knowledge on how a real agency with real designers handle real problems with spectacular results. From the Juxt development process to XML parsing, Flash deconstruction will provide the elements you need to improve the creation of real Flash solutions and real interactive sites.

Remember how I said you could judge this book by its cover? Well, you can also judge Juxt Interactive, its creative team, and their understanding of the Web by how this book is modeled, and how the reader experiences it. This isn't something with which you cuddle under your covers and lazily dream of how brilliant you'll appear to your friends and neighbors. This is a book you slap down in front of your machine, a book in which you dog-ear pages and highlight sections, and a book with which you use the Web to heighten the experience.

That's because half of the book is a teaser to get you out to the Web. Examples. Interviews. Expansive definitions. Discussions. All the things that couldn't be contained in this tome are available out here in the wild blue yonder. For discussion. For sharing. For tweaking.

From a personal perspective, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but it wasn't so much for the Flash as it was for the demonstration of the incorporation of Flash and interactive design into a real design process. If you're looking to animate brochureware (my usual achievement), this isn't the book for you. If you're look to move to the next level, this may be a very valuable stepping stone.

Agree? Disagree? Discuss.