Four Lynda.com Tutorials

By Michele Patterson

I work in graphic art and always want to learn about creative software, and found that Lynda.com provides everything that I could want and more. Lynda Weinman - the creator of the site - is a Web graphics and design veteran, and wrote the very first industry book on Web design, Designing Web Graphics, in 1995. She is a prominent educator and the author of dozens of best-selling books, was a faculty member at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, in 1989, and has worked as an animator and motion graphics director in the film special effects industry.

Getting Started
I logged into my account and found a tutorial I wanted to view, so I selected the download link and then went to an area that was more then a little confusing. I downloaded all the files for the first tutorial - three zip files in all - but encountered errors when I went to open them. The message I saw indicated that I had a corrupt or incomplete file. I deleted and again downloaded the files (very time consuming), but still saw the same error message. I emailed Lynda.com for help and got the following prompt and courteous reply:

“Delete everything you have downloaded so far.  Instead of using Internet Explorer to download the files, use Firefox.  That is the quickest way.  If you’d like the instructions for Internet Explorer I’d be happy to get them to you.  Internet Explorer has recently started treating the naming structure of our multi-part file downloads in such a way that causes these errors.  This is why I recommend Firefox instead with your time constraints.

Best Regards,
Ryan Hannington”

I really appreciate the information, and if I had ventured to read all the download instructions I might have understood to do this the first time. However, I - like many others – sometimes fail to read instructions and would have preferred to find an attached ReadMe file so I couldn’t miss this VERY important information. Once I got all that sorted out the program opened right up and viewed without any further complication.

Testing the Software
After viewing several tutorials and following along I have to say that this is a great site. Most of the speakers/instructors were very knowledgeable and went slow enough to follow easily. While not every single one of them was the best ever, I was able to get the idea and progress to the next step with relative ease.

One thing that should be noted, if you are the teacher, remember to clearly note what you are doing and why you are doing it that way, do not assume that every viewer will fully understand. The instructor for the Fireworks tutorial tended to jump around, name the wrong tutorial and make mention of moving on to the 2nd tutorial when in fact there wasn’t one. She also didn’t explain why she was doing certain things nor did she make it obvious what she was doing to get to the next part. That is the type of thing that will keep people from purchasing more, in fact in the past it was the reason I didn’t download from certain other sites. I have to note that she was the exception rather then the rule and every other tutorial was so well versed I think I had to rewind once or twice if I got distracted. The programs are well worth the price.

Conclusion
Great program and I would recommend it to friends, in fact I have!

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