That's why our heads turned when Duncan McAlester approached us about a book no one else was talking about but that we all knew had to be done. Flash. Usability. Somebody who knows about these things needs to put pen to paper. Even the most ardent opponent of Jakob Nielsen will likely admit--albeit privately--that a lot of what Jakob says is true ("It's just *how* he says it that I don't like..."). Duncan and his co-author, Michelangelo Capraro, have been thinking about, doing, and teaching the combination of Flash design, interface design, and usability since well before the rest of us. They love what you can do with Flash and they realize a lot of what is called bad Flash design is simply a matter of understanding purpose and user, then working through tangible design steps to get them what they need with nothing that takes away from what they need.

I also like that they came to a publisher with this idea, and not the other way around. That's the best way to do a book like this. I knew we'd made a great partnership when I first met Duncan and Michelangelo (their wit, passion and intelligence stays with you days after you've last met with them). I knew we'd made a great book when *Alan Cooper reviewed it and said "Capraro and McAlester GET IT! They identify Flash for what it is: a powerful tool, but not a replacement for good design focused on users and their goals. While their detailed techniques and code samples will help you harness Flash's power and complexity, their insights will give you an important new perspective: Your Flash expertise is for creating a better user experience, not for creating the next blinking widget monstrosity." *(Alan is one of the people who've helped define the field of software design and user-interface design. Read his books.) Is Flash 99% bad (see famous quote supposedly uttered by one J.Nielsen)? In the wrong hands, it could be. Even the best Flash designer can point out any painful slew of examples of terrible Flash design, and that's not counting the aesthetically-impaired sites. But Flash is here, it is being used everywhere, and it's up to you to use it appropriately. You owe it to the people coming to your site. Thanks for listening, and let us know how the book works for you. Steve Weiss, executive editor, steve.weiss@newriders.com. April, 2002.

Are you a Flash user constantly fighting the usability war?

Skip Intro is designed to help educate the Flash community specifically and designers/programmers at large that usability isn't a dirty word. It doesn't mean making boring pedestrian web sites, and it doesn't mean abandoning Flash. Quite the contrary, Flash offers advanced usability elements that traditional HTML websites could never hope to achieve. This book will show designers how to start thinking about their users and, more importantly, how to translate that understanding when they start designing or coding.

Skip Intro moves beyond traditional usability books by shying away from listing examples of "why this is wrong" or "why this is right." Instead, it guides designers through understanding the site requirements and their intended users and then starts them down the road of developing for those users, by taking them step-by-step through design scenerios, rather than providing strict rules of usability.