Tutorials

ActionScript

2007-11-11T16:17:00.000-08:00

ActionScript is the Flash scripting language that lets you add complex interactivity, playback control, and data display to a Flash document. You can add ActionScript within the Flash authoring environment using the Actions panel or create external ActionScript files using an external editor.

You don't need to understand every ActionScript element to begin scripting; if you have a clear goal, you can start building scripts with simple actions. You can incorporate new elements of the language as you learn them to accomplish more complicated tasks.

As with other scripting languages, ActionScript follows its own rules of syntax, reserves keywords, provides operators, and lets you use variables to store and retrieve information. ActionScript includes built-in objects and functions and lets you create custom objects and functions.

ActionScript is based on the ECMAscript specification (ECMA-262), the international standard for the ECMAscript programming language. ActionScript offers a subset of ECMAscript's functionality.

The popular JavaScript language is rooted in the same standard. For this reason, developers who are familiar with JavaScript should find ActionScript immediately familiar and have no trouble learning it quickly.

Workspace Enhancements

2007-11-11T15:53:00.000-08:00

Expanded Stage work area - You can use the area around the Stage to store graphics and other objects without having them appear on the Stage when you play the SWF file. Macromedia expanded this area, called the work area, to allow you to store more items there. Flash users often use the work area to store graphics they plan to animate on the Stage later, or to store objects that do not have a graphical representation during playback, such as data components.

Improved panel management - A key aspect of any software application is that the work flow it allows aids in your productivity. Macromedia Flash 8 has an improved panel management solution that lets you optimize the workspace to better suit the way that you work. Flash lets you group panels together in tabbed-panel sets. You can reduce onscreen clutter by grouping your most commonly used panels together, and you can assign custom names to each panel group.

Single Library panel - You can now use a single Library panel to view the library items of multiple Flash files simultaneously.

Drag and drop components to Library panel - In earlier versions of Flash, you had to place components on the Stage and then delete them--even components that had no visual elements and were only accessed using ActionScript. You can now place such components directly into the library without having to place them on the Stage and later delete them.

Macintosh document tabs - You can now open multiple Flash files in the same window and select among them using document tabs at the top of the window

Improved Preferences dialog box - The Preferences dialog box has been streamlined and reorganized for improved clarity and ease of use

Linkage options for bitmaps and sounds are now in the Properties dialog box - To simplify the work flow for bitmaps and sounds, you can now access the linkage options for these media types in their respective Properties dialog boxes.

Object-based Undo and Redo commands - You can now choose to keep track of the changes you make in Flash on a per-object basis. When you use this mode, each object on the Stage and in the library has its own undo list. This lets you undo the changes you make to an object without having to undo changes to any other object.

Export keyboard shortcuts as HTML - You can export Flash keyboard shortcuts as an HTML file that you can view and print using a standard web browser.

Scripting Improvements

2007-11-11T15:50:00.000-08:00

Scripting improvements

The scripting improvements in Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8 provide better performance, flexibility, and ease of use.Script Assist A new assisted mode in the Actions panel,

Script Assist lets you more easily create scripts without having detailed knowledge of ActionScript. Script Assist helps you build scripts by selecting items from the Actions toolbox in the Actions panel, and provides an interface of text fields, radio buttons, and check boxes that prompt you for the correct variables and other scripting language constructs.

Text Support

2007-11-11T15:41:00.001-08:00

FlashType, a new text rendering engine, enhances the quality and consistency of the way Flash displays text.

Improved text in both Flash authoring and Flash Player Text on the Stage now has a more consistent appearance in the Flash authoring tool and in Flash Player

Improved anti-aliasing options You can specify anti-aliasing options for individual text blocks; these options enhance the display of text for different environments. For example, you can specify anti-aliasing for animation or readability, or apply custom settings that you control.

New Features of Flash Professional 8

2007-11-11T15:33:00.000-08:00

Expressiveness

Flash includes many features designed specifically to enable greater expressiveness in the look and feel of your finished projects.

Gradient enhancements - New controls let you apply complex gradients to objects on the Stage. You can add up to 15 colors to a gradient, precisely control the location of the gradient focal point, and apply other parameters to the gradient. The workflow for applying gradients has also been simplified

Adjustable gradient focal point - The Fill Transform tool now includes an editable focal point that lets you position the focal point (center) of a gradient fill applied to an object.

Object Drawing model - You can now create shapes directly on the Stage that will not interfere with other overlapping shapes. Previously in Flash, all shapes on the same layer of the Stage could affect the outlines of other shapes that they overlapped. When you create a shape with the new Object Drawing model, the shape does not cause changes to other shapes that exist underneath the new shape.

Rectangle and Oval Tool Settings dialog box - The new Rectangle and Oval Tool Settings dialog box lets you specify the width and height of ovals and rectangles, as well as the corner radius of rectangles so that you can create rounded-corner rectangles. To activate the dialog box, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Macintosh) to select the Oval and Rectangle drawing tools on the Stage. When you click OK to verify your settings, Flash draws an appropriately sized oval or rectangle where you clicked the Stage.

Enhanced strokes - Joins and caps on strokes are now drawn more cleanly and precisely. A join is the place where two strokes come together. A cap is the end point of a stroke that does not join with another stroke. In addition, the maximum size of a stroke has been increased from 10 to 200 pixels, and you can now color strokes using a gradient fill.

New curve algorithm - The Pencil tool and Brush tool now let you select the degree of smoothing to apply to curves that you draw with those tools. By increasing the amount of smoothing, you can reduce the number of points used to calculate the curve, which results in smaller SWF files.

Text handles - A new, improved method for working with text includes text boxes that you can resize. You can more easily reposition text blocks with text handles

Improved Fireworks importer - The importer for Macromedia Fireworks PNG files now supports a greater number of the properties that you can apply to graphics in Fireworks. When you import Fireworks files into Flash, these graphics properties remain intact and editable in Flash. Among the properties available in Fireworks that you can now import into Flash are blend modes and filters (called effects in Fireworks).

Custom easing controls - New easing controls let you precisely choose how tweens that you apply in the Timeline affect the appearance of tweened objects on the Stage. A tween is the application of a change to an object over a period of time. Easing a tween controls when the changes to the object are applied. Custom easing lets you easily and precisely control these elements through an intuitive graph that provides independent control over the position, rotation, scale, color, and filters used in a motion tween.

Filters - Filters let you create more compelling designs by applying visual effects to movie clips and text. Filters are natively supported and rendered in real time by Flash Player 8. With these filters, you can make objects glow, add drop shadows, and apply many other effects and combinations of effects.

Blend modes - You can achieve a variety of compositing effects by using blend modes to change the way the image of one object on the Stage is combined with the images of any objects beneath it. Flash offers runtime control over blend modes, letting you composite graphical effects that are dynamic and can react to user interactivity.

Bitmap smoothing - Bitmap images now look much better on the Stage when severely enlarged or reduced. The appearance of these bitmaps in the Flash authoring tool and in Flash Player is now consistent.

Runtime bitmap caching - Runtime bitmap caching lets you optimize playback performance by specifying that a static movie clip (for example, a background image) or button symbol be cached as a bitmap at runtime. Caching a movie clip as a bitmap prevents Flash Player from having to continually redraw the image, providing a significant improvement in playback performance.

Creating Simple Flash Document

2007-11-09T02:10:00.000-08:00

Flash Document

When you open the Flash Professional 8, the start page will automatically appear but you can disable it at the Edit>Preferences. In general category you can see the at the right “on launch” , there are choices you can select about what you want to do during start up of Flash Professional 8. At the start page you can open your recent file, create new file and create template. Just select create new Flash document to start a simple flash document.

Creating a simple Flash Document

To demonstrate the basic steps of creating any Flash document, this section guides you through the process in a simple tutorial. This short tutorial is just a sample of the Flash workflow.

The first step is to create a new document in Flash.

Select File > New. Or by selecting at the startup page “create new Flash Document”
In the New Document dialog box, Flash Document is selected by default.
Click OK.
In the Property inspector, the Size button displays the current Stage size setting as 550 x 400 pixels.
The Background color swatch is set to white. You can change the color of the Stage by clicking the swatch and selecting a different color.

You can see this at the bottom of the screen of Flash Professional 8

Drawing a circle
After you've created your document, you are ready to add some artwork for the document.
1. Select the oval tools at the tools panel.
2. Select the No Color option from the Stroke Color Picker.
3.Select a color of your choice from the Fill Color Picker.
Make sure the fill color contrasts well with the Stage color.
4. Draw a circle on the Stage by selecting the Oval tool and Shift-dragging on the Stage.
Holding the Shift key constrains the Oval tool to a circle.

Creating a symbol
You can turn your new artwork into a reusable asset by converting it to a Flash symbol. A symbol is a media asset that can be reused anywhere in your Flash document without the need to re-create it.

Click the Selection tool in the Tools panel.
Click the circle on the Stage to select it.
With the circle still selected, select Modify > Convert to Symbol.
In the Convert to Symbol dialog box, type my_circle into the Name text box.
The default behavior is now Movie Clip.
Click OK.
A square bounding box appears around the circle. You have now created a reusable asset, called a symbol, in your document.
The new symbol appears in the Library panel.
If the Library panel is not open, select Window > Library

Animating the circle
Now that you have some artwork in your document, you can make it more interesting by animating it to move across the Stage.

Drag the circle to just left of the Stage area.
Click Frame 20 of Layer 1 in the Timeline.

Selecting Frame 20 of Layer 1 in the Timeline
Select Insert > Timeline > Frame.
Flash adds frames to Frame 20, which remains selected.

Frames inserted in the Timeline
With Frame 20 still selected, select Insert > Timeline > Keyframe.
A keyframe is added in Frame 20. A keyframe is a frame where some property of an object is explicitly changed. In this new keyframe, you will change the circle's location.

Inserting a keyframe in Frame 20
With Frame 20 still selected in the Timeline, drag the circle to just right of the Stage area.
Select Frame 1 of Layer 1 in the Timeline.
In the Property inspector (its default location is at the bottom of the Flash application window), select Motion from the Tween pop-up menu.

Selecting a motion tween in the Property inspector

An arrow appears in the Timeline in Layer 1 between Frame 1 and Frame 20.

The Timeline with an arrow indicating a motion tween

This step creates a tweened animation of the circle moving from its position in the first keyframe in Frame 1 to its new position in the second keyframe in Frame 20.
In the Timeline, drag the red playhead back and forth from frame 1 to frame 20 to preview the animation.
Select File > Save.
Choose a location for the file on your hard disk and name the file SimpleFlash.fla.
Select Control > Test Movie to test the FLA file.
Close the Test Movie window.

Publishing the file
When you finish your Flash document, you are ready to publish it so it can be viewed in a browser. When you publish a FLA file, Flash compresses it into the SWF file format. This is the format that you place in a web page. The Publish command can automatically generate an HTML file with the correct tags in it for you.

Select File > Publish Settings.
In the Publish Settings dialog box, select the Formats tab and verify that only the Flash and HTML options are selected.
This action causes Flash to publish only the Flash SWF file and an HTML file. The HTML file is used to display the SWF file in a web browser.

The Flash and HTML options on the Formats tab

In the Publish Settings dialog box, select the HTML tab and verify that Flash Only is selected in the Template pop-up menu.
This template creates a simple HTML file that contains only your SWF file when displayed in a browser window.

Choosing Flash Only from the Template menu
Click OK.
Select File > Publish and open your web browser.
Select File > Open in the web browser.
Navigate to the folder where you saved your FLA file.
The SimpleFlash.swf and SimpleFlash.html files are there. Flash creates these files when you click Publish.
Select the file named SimpleFlash.html.
Click Open.
Your Flash document is displayed in the browser window.

Congratulations! You have now completed your first Flash document

Add Video

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The Library panel includes an imported Flash video file (FLV). You'll add the video to your document, and Flash will add the necessary frames to play the video.

Verify that the Content layer is still selected in the Timeline. From the Library panel, drag the ggb_movie_for_trio_new video to the dark gray Video guide on the Stage.

A dialog box appears that indicates Flash will add 138 frames to the Timeline for the video. Click Yes.

Drag the playhead across the Timeline to view the video.

Working with Video

Macromedia Flash Basic 8 and Flash Professional 8 are powerful tools for incorporating video footage into web-based presentations. Flash Video offers technological and creative benefits that let you create immersive, rich experiences that fuse video together with data, graphics, sound, and interactive control. Flash Video lets you easily put video on a web page in a format that almost anyone can view. This chapter provides an introduction to Flash Video, including information on how to create and publish Flash Video.

About video features in Flash

Macromedia Flash Basic 8 and Macromedia Flash Professional 8 provide several ways for you to include video in your Flash documents. How you choose to deploy your video will determine how you create your video content, and how you integrate it for use with Flash. This section describes different video features in Flash, and how you can use them to incorporate video content.

Flash provides several methods for integrating and delivering video content. The ways in which you can incorporate video into Flash are:

Streaming video content - Flash lets you host video files using Flash Communication Server, a server solution optimized for the delivery of streaming, real-time media. You can import video clips stored locally into your Flash documents, and later upload them to the server. This allows you to more easily assemble and develop Flash content. You can also use the new FLVPlayback component or ActionScript to control video playback and provide intuitive controls for users to interact with the video.

Progressively downloading video from a web server - If you don't have access to Flash Communication Server or FVSS, you can still enjoy the benefits of downloading video from an external source when you use progressive downloading. Progressively downloading a video clip from a web server doesn't provide the same real-time performance that Flash Communication Server does; however, you can use relatively large video clips, and keep the size of your published SWF files to a minimum. You can also use the new FLVPlayback component or ActionScript to control video playback and provide intuitive controls for users to interact with the video.

Importing embedded video - You can import video clips into Flash as embedded files. As with an imported bitmap or vector artwork file, an embedded video file becomes part of the Flash document. for this reason, you can only import very short duration video clips.

Importing video in QuickTime format You can import video clips in QuickTime format as linked files. Flash documents that contain linked QuickTime video must be published in QuickTime format. A linked video file does not become part of the Flash document. Instead, the Flash document maintains a pointer to the linked file.

Importing FLV files in the Library You can import video clips in Macromedia Flash Video (FLV) format directly into Flash. When you import FLV files, you use the encoding options already applied to the files. You do not need to select encoding options during import.

Using the FLVPlayback component New to Flash Professional 8, the FLVPlayback component lets you quickly add a full-featured FLV or MP3 playback control to your Flash movie. FLVPlayback provides support for both progressive downloading and streaming FLV files. FLVPlayback lets you easily create intuitive video controls for users to control video playback, as well as the ability to apply premade skins, or to apply your own custom skins to the video interface.

Controlling external video playback using ActionScript You can play back external FLV files in a Flash document at runtime using the NetConnection and NetStream ActionScript objects.

Controlling video playback in the Timeline If you are comfortable with ActionScript, you can write custom ActionScript to control video playback. You can play or stop a video, jump to a frame, and control video in other ways.

View object properties

When you add an object to the Stage, you can select it, and then view and change its properties in the Property inspector. The type of object selected determines which properties appear. For example, if you select a text object, the Property inspector displays settings such as font, type size, and paragraph formatting, which you can either view or change. If no object is selected, the

Property inspector displays properties for the entire document.
On the Stage, with the Selection tool selected, click the Title graphic.
The Property inspector (Window > Properties) shows specifications, such as height, width, and Stage coordinates, for the movie clip.

On the Stage, click the bounding box for the video movie clip that you dragged to the Stage and view its attributes in the Property inspector.

In the Instance Name text box of the Property inspector, enter video as the instance name.

NOTE
An instance is an occurance of a symbol on the Stage. Because ActionScript, the Flash scripting language, often refers to instance names in order to perform operations on instances, it is a good practice to name the instances you create. To learn more about naming instances, select Help > Flash Tutorials > ActionScript: Write Scripts.

Add video control behaviors

Behaviors let you add complex functionality to your document easily, without having to know ActionScript, the Flash scripting language. You'll now add behaviors for video control.

In the Timeline, click Frame 1 of the Content layer to select it, if it's not already selected.

On the Stage, click the Play movie clip instance (which looks like a play button) to select it. In the Behaviors panel (Window > Behaviors), click Add (+) and select Embedded Video > Play. To learn more about symbols and instances, select Help > Flash Tutorials > Basic Tasks: Create Symbols and Instances.

In the Play Video dialog box, verify that Relative is selected. Select video, which is the instance name that you gave to the video clip, and click OK.

On the Stage, click the Pause movie clip instance to select it. In the Behaviors panel, click Add (+) and select Embedded Video > Pause.
In the Pause Video dialog box, again select the video movie clip, and click OK.
On the Stage, click the Rewind movie clip instance to select it. In the Behaviors panel, click Add (+) and select Embedded Video > Rewind.
In the Rewind Video dialog box, select Video.
In the Number of Frames to Step Back text box, enter 20.
The Number of Frames to Step Back text box indicates how many frames the playhead should move back when the user clicks the Rewind button.

Flash Tutorials

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Introduction to Flash Professional 8

What is Flash?

Flash is an authoring tool that designers and developers use to create presentations, applications, and other content that enables user interaction. Flash projects can include simple animations, video content, complex presentations, applications, and everything in between. In general, individual pieces of content made with Flash are called applications, even though they might only be a basic animation. You can make media-rich Flash applications by including pictures, sound, video, and special effects.

What are the main part of Flash?

The Stage --- is where your graphics, videos, buttons, and so on appear during playback. The Stage is described further in Flash Basics.
The Timeline is where you tell Flash when you want the graphics and other elements of your project to appear. You also use the Timeline to specify the layering order of graphics on the Stage. Graphics in higher layers appear on top of graphics in lower layers.
The Library panel is where Flash displays a list of the media elements in your Flash document.
ActionScript code allows you to add interactivity to the media elements in your document. For example, you can add code that causes a button to display a new image when the user clicks it. You can also use ActionScript to add logic to your applications. Logic enables your application to behave in different ways depending on the user's actions or other conditions. Flash includes two versions of ActionScript, each suited to an author's specific needs. For more information about writing ActionScript, see Learning ActionScript 2.0 in Flash in the Help panel.

What you can do with Flash?

There's so much you can do with Flash and so easy to learn and use. With the wide array of features in Flash, you can create many types of applications. The following are some examples of the kinds of applications Flash can generate:

Animations - These include banner ads, online greeting cards, cartoons, and so on. Many other types of Flash applications include animation elements as well.
Games - Many games are built with Flash. Games usually combine the animation capabilities of Flash with the logic capabilities of ActionScript.
User interfaces - Many website designers use Flash to design user interfaces. The interfaces include simple navigation bars as well as much more complex interfaces.
Flexible messaging areas - These are areas in web pages that designers use for displaying information that may change over time. A flexible messaging area (FMA) on a restaurant website might display information about each day's menu specials.
Rich Internet applications - These include a wide spectrum of applications that provide a rich user interface for displaying and manipulating remotely stored data over the Internet. A rich Internet application could be a calendar application, a price-finding application, a shopping catalog, an education and testing application, or any other application that presents remote data with a graphically rich interface.

What about Flash Files?

The primary Flash file type, FLA files, contain three basic types of information that comprise a Flash document. These include the following:

Media objects are the various graphic, text, sound and video objects that comprise the content of your Flash document. By importing or creating these elements in Flash and then arranging them on the Stage and in the Timeline, you define what the viewer of your document will see and when they will see it.
The Timeline is the place in Flash where you tell Flash when specific media objects should appear on the Stage. The Timeline is like a spreadsheet that progresses from left to right, with the columns representing time. The rows represent layers, with the content in higher layers appearing above lower layers' contents on the Stage.
ActionScript code is the programming code you can add to Flash documents to make them respond to user interactions and to more finely control the behavior of your Flash documents. Much can be accomplished in Flash without ActionScript, but using ActionScript offers many more possibilities.

Flash can be used to work with a variety of file types. Each type has a separate purpose. The following list describes each file type and its uses:

FLA files are the primary files you work with in Flash. These are the files that contain the basic media, timeline, and script information for a Flash document.
SWF files are the compressed versions of FLA files. These files are the ones you display in a web page.
AS files are ActionScript files. You can use these files if you prefer to keep some or all of your ActionScript code outside of your FLA files. These can be helpful for code organization and for projects that have multiple people working on different parts of the Flash content.
SWC files contain the reusable Flash components. Each SWC file contains a compiled movie clip, ActionScript code, and any other assets that the component requires.
ASC files are files used to store ActionScript that will be executed on a computer running Flash Communication Server. These files provide the ability to implement server-side logic that works in conjunction with ActionScript in a SWF file.
JSFL files are JavaScript files that you can use to add new functionality to the Flash authoring tool. See Extending Flash for more information.
FLP files are Flash Project files (Flash Professional only). You can use Flash Projects to manage multiple document files in a single project. Flash Projects allow you to group multiple, related files together to create complex applications.

Now you know the main part and the file types of Flash Pro 8, let's start on how to use them all.

The Main Part of Flash

Stage:

is the rectangular area where you place graphic content, including vector art, text boxes, buttons, imported bitmap graphics or video clips, and so on when creating Flash documents. The Stage in the Flash authoring environment represents the rectangular space in Macromedia Flash Player or in a web browser window where your Flash document appears during playback. You can zoom in and out to change the view of the Stage as you work.

Timeline:

organizes and controls a document's content over time in layers and frames. Like films, Flash documents divide lengths of time into frames. Layers are like multiple film strips stacked on top of one another, each containing a different image that appears on the Stage. The major components of the Timeline are layers, frames, and the playhead.
Layers in a document are listed in a column on the left side of the Timeline. Frames contained in each layer appear in a row to the right of the layer name. The Timeline header at the top of the Timeline indicates frame numbers. The playhead indicates the current frame displayed on the Stage. As a Flash document plays, the playhead moves from left to right through the Timeline.
The Timeline status display at the bottom of the Timeline indicates the selected frame number, the current frame rate, and the elapsed time to the current frame.

NOTE: When an animation is played, the actual frame rate is displayed; this may differ from the document's frame rate setting if the computer can't calculate and display the animation quickly enough.

You can change the way frames appear in the Timeline, as well as display thumbnails of frame content in the Timeline. The Timeline shows where animation occurs in a document, including frame-by-frame animation, tweened animation, and motion paths. Controls in the layers section of the Timeline let you hide, show, lock, or unlock layers, as well as display layer contents as outlines.You can insert, delete, select, and move frames in the Timeline. You can also drag frames to a new location on the same layer or to a different layer.

How do we change background and Stage size?

The Stage provides a preview of how your Flash content will appear in your published file. You'll change the size of the Stage to accommodate artwork designed for a larger Stage, and you'll change the background color of the Stage.

In the Tools panel, click the Selection tool.
On the Stage, click anywhere in the gray workspace that surrounds the Stage, or on the background area of the Stage, so that no objects are selected.
The Property inspector, under the Stage, displays properties for the document when no objects are selected.
To change the Stage background color, click the Background color box and select a light shade of gray, such as gray with the hexadecimal value of #CCCCCC.
To change the Stage size, click Size in the Property inspector. In the Document Properties dialog box, enter 750 for the Stage width, and then click OK.
The Stage resizes to 750 pixels wide.

Add graphics to the Stage

To add library items to your document, you verify that you're adding the object to the correct layer, and then drag the item from the Library panel to the Stage.

In the Timeline, click the Content layer name to select that layer. With the Selection tool selected, drag the Title movie clip, which contains a bitmap image and vector graphic, from the Library panel to the Stage and align it on top of the gray bar at the top of the Stage that contains the word Title.
In Flash, you can work with bitmap images, which describe graphics using pixels, and vector art, which uses mathematical representation to describe art.
With the Content layer still selected, drag the text symbol from the Library panel to Stage, and align it with the Trio ZX2004 text that's already in place as a guide. You can use your keyboard arrow keys to nudge the text into place.
The title text is actually a graphic created from text.