What Would You Advice a Flash Newbee?

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What Would You Advice a Flash Newbee?

I am the newest of the newest possible user of Flash.

I have a pretty extensive fine arts background. I am not artistically imparred.

I am also a software engineer -- albiet now I am just a tester -- by profession and so I guess Action Script will not be impossible to overcome.

Yet I am just beginning. Right now I am going to take a serious thrusting stab at this stuff. So to begin with the beginning. I have just downloaded Flash CS4 and here are my questions.
What is the latest and greatest version? Is it CS4 and that is all? Is there a subversion of CS4? What about Action Script? Is there s seperate versioni number for Action Script?
What is the best tutorial or book to use to start out with?

[Dcrux]

I have a pretty extensive fine arts background. I am not artistically imparred.

You have my condolences.

Most of the fine arts grad I am aware of had a high opinion of creativity for the sake of creativity, and not a lick of sense about human factors or effective communications.

Start with the move from user interface decoration to user interface design with the books About Face and The Inmates Are Running The Asylum. Neither have anything to do with flash, and don't touch flash until you read them.

Rule Number One: Decorating the UI is NOT Designing a User Interface. Learn about human interaction first. Then learn how to do use centered design in Actionscript -- otherwise you're practically guaranteed to go fad chasing. Asking about the newest of new, new versions is an inauspicious start in the wrong direction.

Then, only then, go to (in my opinion) the least visited site for Flash design on the internet: Flazoom. Start with What Would Wal-Mart Do?. Then read every article linked at the top of that article.

Flash is arguably the most abused program in existence. Flash takes a hundred years of what we're discovered about moving pictures, telling a compelling story and effective communications and flushes it. Flash is almost universally used to firewall the creative off from the user ... in order to do the most unfortunate things to users. (A plus for a programmer, a bad deal for the user who has to put up with the fine arts types' high opinion of themselves) The fine arts and CS tends to seal one's fate.