Well if you're like myself. Maintaining a website for self fulfillment but little or no traffic, or your site looks just plain boring. Turn to Flash 5. Want to make a cool cartoon? Turn to Flash 5. Want to be able to make all that cool stuff right outta the box?! DO NOT TURN TO FLASH 5! Before you rant on the program, make sure you set out at least a month to learn it. It is not very "newbie" savvy. But if you're up to the challenge come along for the ride.
When I first started using this program the only thing I knew how to do was draw pictures on the template. Pathetic, eh? So I hit the books. Getting book after book, going through so many bibles of this program I came to think Noahs Ark was a tool to make a curve. Reading for days on end, I finnally decided to test out my skills. I took my knowledge, Flash 5, my PC, and some old pictures from my trip to New York, and created a pretty flashy slideshow(it's WAAYYY less bulkly than making a Java slideshow).
I'd figured if THIS was all it took to create a simple little slideshow, imagine what MORE reading could lead to! So I read up. Consuming as many words as possible. My mind was spinning in circles of quotes from the books, anything from, "Playback the next keyframe to coincide with the second to last....." to "The circle tools creates a circle".
After all that I could create little cartoons. Which lead to web sites. All in all this program is a little rocky. It could have been more user-friendly, have different teaching methods(the built in training guidelines didn't cut it), etc.
And remember, what you put into it, is what you get out. Don't expect to read a chapter and think you can create long cartoons. The most important thing is to read. Maybe you will pick it up faster than me, maybe you don't wanna read as much as me. Either way, this program is right for you, if you want flashy web sites, cartoons, animations, anything you can think of.

Recommended: Yes