The book is good but you'll have to fight with the website to get your practice files (registering and then not being recognized by their system, requesting a token that never comes to your specified email address). I just sent them an email with my proof of purchase and requested they send me a link to download. Unfortunately the days these practice files came shipped with the book on a DVD are pretty much over and you'll have to do some fancy footwork to download your files. It is much a learning experience as learning the After Effects program itself. Also, if you receive this book outside of business hours you'll have to wait until the next workday for a response from Routledge. I created two registrations with two different email addresses and neither allows me access to my project files. Of note there must of been something wrong with the print drum when this copy was run off the press, look how garbled some of the headliners are above the paragraphs (see screen shot). I may have to buy another one. This was a new book purchased from a third party. I received a replacement from Amazon. Going through the book some parts aren't detailed enough like on Page 46 it says in the Layer panel click on the View Menu and select Anchor Point Path. I did that and there's no Anchor Point Path in the View Menu on the top of the menu bar. Obviously I'm choosing the wrong item or in the wrong panel but without a prior knowledge of After Effects I'm spending 45 minutes on each page Googling for more detailed instruction. By all means, if you can afford it, take an in-residence class to have immediate help when you can't find a particular function called out for in the instructions. It will save you loads of time and keep you from losing interest. Because I can't find this particular menu option called out for in Chapter 2 I'm not getting the results the book says I should. I'm just going to have to keep fumbling with it until I figure this program out. Unless somebody throws a big bag of money on my doorstep I'm not going to be able to pay for an in-residence Adobe certification class so i'm just going to have to keep pushing controls and clicking on options and using my Google fingers typing for more detailed help outside of the book here until I either learn this program or break everything. It's how I learned Power Point; I got pretty good at creating projects in that program. At the rate I'm going it will take 52 years to get through this book. I may be better off watching videos of how to work with After Effects and once I get a basic understanding then I can graduate to instructional books like this one. I'm not blaming the book; I'm just completely unfamiliar with this program and cannot follow through with the lessons as instructed simply because I can't find the commands called out for. Like, how do you close the Layer panel? I don't even know how to open it so I'm not going to be able to close what I don't know how to open. I'll subscribe to Lynda.com and watch Chris Meyer's videos and hopefully this will shed some light on this dilemma and learning curve issue I'm facing as I truly want to learn this suite but cannot afford an in-residence class that i get in may car three times a week and go to. Sometimes you just have to spend weeks sifting through videos and take a hands off approach until you have basic understanding of what is going on... and then and only then will you be able to complete these lessons correctly in their entirety.