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The books I am using are the 'Training from the Source' books which are Macromedia's own publications, they have easy to follow step by step lessons and supporting CD with tutorial files, you go through lesson by lesson and feel like you have accomplished something each time you complete a bit.
I have to say there always seems like a bit of a leap between learning flash and being able to do anything advanced with it.
I am trying to learn Actionscript at the momment and find most of the stuff I come across online expects you to know everything first, as for the Bible series recommended above - these are not learning books but reference books. The other good learning books are the 'Friends of Ed' books, these are really good step by step books too
FlashKit - this site was always THE place to go, and still is, but be prepared to spend time trawling through stuff until you find something. Personally I think this site is more useful when you know more and can understand what you are looking for.
Other sites I would reccomend would be 'Kirupa.com' some good tutorials there broken into levels of expeience.
Hope this helps
ZA
I am just trying to learn flash also. I have completed the Flash 8 Training from the sourc book and have the Flash 8 Professional and Actionscript books on their way.
If you learn well by trying things yourself these books are really good.
If theres something specific you need to know I find this forum and the macromedia site really useful.
Let us know if you find anything else awesome.
I'm trying to learn actionscript primarally and everyone I talk to about flash will tell you it's very dificult. Even those that have no idea what actionscript is think that it is dificult to use.
This is my second attempt at trying to learn Flash. I got burned out trying to learn it last year, so my only tip is to stick with it. So far I've completed one project in flash that I could have done in PHP in about 1/2 an hour, but I will say that the results of 1 week of work in flash give a much prettier presentation.
I'd like to add that even though I am beginning to understand the actual actionscript code, I am completely lost trying to understand what happens at run time.
Just stick with it, while some code looks daunting its largely a case of breaking down what your trying to achive into small chunks to make one larger script.
I hope this helps you.
Sean